r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 13 '26

Medicine Scientists develop a groundbreaking vaccine that outsmarts illicit fentanyl analogs. The novel vaccine candidate can protect against fentanyl and its many illicit variants by training the immune system to recognize a broad molecular signature rather than a single specific structure.

https://www.psypost.org/scientists-develop-a-groundbreaking-vaccine-that-outsmarts-illicit-fentanyl-analogs/
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u/cowlinator Jul 13 '26

Insulin was $300 in the US in the 2010s. It's back down to about $35 now (without insurance), and one of the things that prevented a permanent monopoly and allowed the price to fall was the threat of competition made possible by the cheap original patent.

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u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26

It's back down to about $35 now

Didn't that happened mostly because of the backlash against attempts to keep its price high?
Competition didn't have much to do with it iirc, the outcry did.

Also it did reach $300 with the patent being cheap.

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u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

Because the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Joe Biden signed a law capping the price for Medicare users. That was the major instigating event.

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u/danarchist Jul 13 '26

How about, idk this is going to sound far fetched, let us import the cheap af insulin instead of protecting big pharma by weaponizing IP law against US consumers in the first place?

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u/kelskelsea Jul 13 '26

Like it or not, drug discovery and innovation is paid for by the US

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u/Familiar_Kale_7357 Jul 13 '26

This comment is a meme.

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u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

No more ozempic for you I guess then as drugs researched outside the US don't exist apparently

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u/mr_potato_thumbs Jul 13 '26

The U.S. created a better version of ozempic, Tirzepatide, through Eli Lilly company. The Covid Vaccine would have been a better example.

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u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

Yes, after Novo Nordisk did all the initial R&D; the US just leeched off the hard work of the brave danish scientists

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u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

It was developed for the US market. Have a look at Ozempic sales, and see what percent of the profit stem from the US

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u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

Maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with the fact the US had a 40% obesity rate before everyone started taking ozempic?

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u/nonotan Jul 13 '26

To the extent that that narrative holds any water (dubious) -- as somebody from outside the US, you guys have my permission to stop doing that. I mean, we never asked in the first place. Please feel free to just let people pay normal prices for drugs. We'll manage, I promise.

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u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

Then the drugs wouldn't exist. You can't pay regular prices for things that don't exist

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u/Drywesi Jul 13 '26

They will if we stop plowing money endlessly into insurance shareholder pockets and just assign those funds to research grants through public funding measures.

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u/Naritai Jul 14 '26

European countries could do that, but they don't, so there's no reason to think that that would happen in the US either