Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Alternate Universe Megan


Less Slick and Manipulative Megan McArdle: Some people say mean and wrong things about "me-too" drugs. Lots of people say they are just knock-offs of existing drugs. I will not tell you who they are or where you can find their writings. You will have to take my word for it that they said what I tell you they said. But they are wrong. "Me-too" is a misnomer because it takes years to develop a drug, therefore any very similar drug that arrives quickly after can't be a copycat drug. My source is Derek Lowe who is "a chemistry blogger and medicinal chemist working on preclinical drug discovery."

4 comments:

fish said...

LOL:

You should wait for others to write an article about subjects in which you are personally involved, instead of writing it yourself, as you did at Derek Lowe (chemist). This applies to articles about you, your achievements, your band, your business, your publications, your website, your relatives, and any other possible conflict of interest.
Creating an article about yourself is strongly discouraged. If you create such an article, it might be listed on articles for deletion. Deletion is not certain, but many feel strongly that you should not start articles about yourself. This is because independent creation encourages independent validation of both significance and verifiability. All edits to articles must conform to Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, and Wikipedia:Verifiability.
If you are not "notable" under Wikipedia guidelines, creating an article about yourself may violate the policy that Wikipedia is not a personal webspace provider and would thus qualify for speedy deletion. If your achievements, etc., are verifiable and genuinely notable, and thus suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later. (See Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles.) Thank you. VQuakr (talk) 04:44, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Susan of Texas said...

Awesome.

McArdle's sources are increasingl wingnutty, but nobody seems to care. They only need the thinnest of veneers of respectability, it seems.

Anonymous said...

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/23/why-almost-everything-you-hear-about-medicine-is-wrong.html

It boggles the mind because Megan has gone out of her way to point out that medical studies are frequently wrong and then goes right to Derek Lowe every time as a source about the pharmaceutical industry...without really ever mentioning that for profit corporations have incentive to hide bad studies.
and then she makes up numbers about the pharmacy industry like 80%

BoredNow said...

Susan
I adore your blog, because reading your masterful takedowns of the mcmangled view of the universe, give me proof that not all of us are self-centred self-indulgent fuckwits. /homage

However I do think you’re maligning Derek Lowe a little unfairly. His is a decent industry research blog which does on occasion talk about the shortcomings he sees within the same.
It’s not from a rah rah Big Pharma Free Market always roolz perspective.
The point that the larger Pharma R& Ds seem to independently target the same class of compounds for R & D at the same time is a valid one. The real question is why ALL of them?
Is it simply that they (researchers) all become aware via conferences and academic papers of the same possible opportunities for a breakthru at the same time? Or do risk averse marketing/sales strategies have too heavy an influence over which new compounds/drugs get pushed through to the final (more expensive) stages of development? Or a confluence of the two?
The issue of me-too drugs is a thorny one, though they have advantages, me-too drugs represent far too much of new drugs that have been brought to the market. That much is clear, what is not obvious is how to practically correct it.

This was meant to be a short post.
Shorter Me: McMegan managed the stopped clock is right twice a day trick. Although the time is correct it has no bearing on whether its day or night outside.