One of the oldest marketing tricks in the book is to dramatically overprice something in order to increase its perceived value. Ironically, the less intrinsic value the commodity holds, the more effective such a tactic can be. This could explain what’s going on with one of the highest priced and most useless chemotherapy drugs on the market today.
The chemotherapy agent is known as ipilimumab (trade name YERVOY®), and costs about $120,000 for a full course of treatment. While the manufacturer advertises YERVOY® as providing tangible hope to those with non-resectable or metastatic melanoma, it also boldly warns on its website that the effects of this drug can be quite deadly:
What are the serious side effects of YERVOY?