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IBEC Seminar: Astrid Viciano
Friday, November 11, 2022 @ 10:00 am–12:00 pm
Is the price of pharmaceutical drugs justified?
Astrid Viciano, IBEC
10 euros, 1000 euros, or rather 1 million? Many new medicines that have recently reached the market are prohibitively expensive. But are these prices justified? Science reporter Astrid Viciano has investigated the high prices of innovative therapies. For these investigations, she received a number of European journalism stipends.
Viciano will explain how the pharmaceutical industry calculates prices for new drugs, and who currently determines the costs for new medications in different healthcare systems. Looking into different, concrete examples such as the drug Zolgensma for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy, she will point out how drugs are currently developed and approved, and how medications for orphan diseases are developed. Moreover, looking into historic examples such as insulin, she will look into why access to potentially life-saving drugs is still not guaranteed in all regions of the world, an urgent problem the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted in the past two years.
Dr. Astrid Viciano has been working as a science journalist for German national media such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Spiegel, and GEO for more than 20 years.
She has worked in a variety of European cross-border teams, focusing on in-depth investigative science reporting. From 2012 to 2016, she worked as a freelance reporter from Paris, and from 2009 and 2011 in Los Angeles. She has published articles in German, English, Dutch and Spanish. Viciano has won several national and international journalism awards, grants, and fellowships.
Astrid Viciano is a medical doctor with a doctorate in immunology and virology and also has an M.A. in Specialized Journalism (USC Annenberg ’11). Currently she is „journalist-in-residence“ at IBEC. She holds the Spanish and German nationalities.
