Comment Re:ROI for drug development (Score 2) 390
Given that Ebola is currently confined to Africa, and that a relatively small number of people have caught it (less than 4000)...and these outbreaks seem to only come along once every 20 years, where was the incentive for the drug company to create this drug? Was it good timing that it has something ready to go just now.
Will each dose be prohibitively expensive to administer in Africa, or it remains to be seen if WHO will foot the bill to the tune of 10's of millions $$.
Not once in 20. Every two years... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks
Yes the number of inflicted individuals is too small \ to trigger major financial investment.
Yes the inflicted individuals are mostly too poor to trigger major financial investment!
Yes global risk is so large most research is department of defense funded.
This is so serious and so bad a global risk I dislike thinking about it except that
the world needs to pay attention. Today the context for disease is big $$ pharma
and big $$ agriculture. This has risks so large none with $$ want to touch it
outside of some rarified well funded well secured facilities (a good thing IMO).