“benefited from comparative studies on patients with spinal muscular atrophy”, that’s not “funded the R&D” but “NiH did studies and AveXis read them”. If it was more than that they wouldn’t use that kind of weasel language that only implies, but doesn’t say, things. The rest is approval fast-track which saved AveXis money, but didn’t cost the tax payer a dime.

I’m not saying that they’re not overcharging – of course they are, they definitely are, especially after getting bought up by Novartis and given the US’s inability to actually bargain with drug manufacturers. But this narrative of “taxpayers fronted all the costs” (“R&D was funded through the NiH”, implying all of it) is BS.

And even then, and I fucking knew what I was doing when I said “I don’t wanna talk about the capitalism aspect”, the drug would’ve still been more expensive to develop, per dose, if it was fully state-funded.

Also I wouldn’t be surprised if the French research that led to the whole gene therapy stuff in general was 100x more expensive than those NiH comparative studies. It’s foundational research companies never do that kind of stuff. Probably at least 10-20 PhDs in that overall, funded by the French taxpayer.