Can We Celebrate Saving Lives as We Destroy Them?

Pharmaceutical pricing has been all over the news and, if you’re sick, could be more than just an issue of morality – it could be a matter of life and death. Profiteering by unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies goes to a whole new level when it comes to orphan drugs. Take Biogen’s recent pricing decision for Spinraza, used to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), the most common genetic cause of infant mortality. At a cost of $750,000 for the first year (the cost of 6 doses), is it right to hold the treatment for an infant so far out of reach for the vast majority of Americans? Can we really celebrate such great leaps in discovery when we simultaneously allow the economic side of it to destroy so many lives? Read more. (Source: Gordon Smith, Harvard Business Review, 4/7/17)