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Antibiotic Resistant Staph Antibiotic Discovered
edward.virtually@pob writes "CNN is reporting that a team of scientists has discovered an extremely effective killer of the antibiotic resistant form of staph infection occuring naturally in rock pools. Unfortunately, despite the obvious cheap potential availability of this cure, do not expect it to be cheaply available. The employer of the scientists, AquaPharm Bio-Discovery Limited, the story notes 'is keeping the identity of its MRSA-killing bacteria a closely guarded secret, and taken out patents on how they can be cultivated and used.' Oh well."
That's not an argument for being able to artificially restrict supply of a potentially life saving drug, that's an argument for rethinking how R&D is performed in our economy.
Realistically, if people are dying because our brand of capitalism requires artificial scarcity in order to get research done, then we need to change our economic system sharpish, not just write it off as "oh well, life isn't fair".
You obviously have no idea how much money it takes to conduct studies that prove the drug safe and effective. This needs to be done before the FDA and other drug agencies approve the drug for use. It can take millions of dollars to conduct just one study, and usually multiple studies are needed to test the safety in kidney patients, the elderly, and the young. If drug companies couldn't make billions of dollars a year for about a decade from "blockbuster" drugs like this, there wouldn't be any drug companies at all, and thus no new drugs.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
As a Staph researcher, I should say that it's wonderful that there's a new promising antibiotic out there, BUT we have no information on a) how effective it is on different strains of Staph b) if it's specific to Staph or to a wide variety of bacteria or MOST importantly c) if it's toxic to humans. The last thing you want is to get sicker while taking it.
So treat this more as a press release, less as a scientific discovery until the peer reviewed articles and FDA approval phases start.
Niles
In this case, I feel like they filed for a patent to save humanity from itself. We as a species are overusing antibiotics. They don't just go away when they exit our bodies, or when the pills, cleaners, feed and fertilizer adjuncts expire. They wash out into the ecosystem where they definitely kill a lot of bacteria... but this is the dark point.
They get weakened and find a culture that has mutated, or is ready to mutate - and it survives. Not only does it live on, but it thrives because it's competition has been wiped out.
Now when that super-bug comes back to knock on your door, it laughs at your antibiotic treatments.
I would prefer to have a certain class of treatment guarded behind intellectual property laws. I would prefer to see doses of that treatment be rather expensive, so that Joe Sixpack isn't sprinkling it on his lawn, and flooding his watershed with the substance - almost dredging out recruits for the next generation of biowars.
Instead, it should be reserved for last-case scenarios, and applied in surgical strike fashion.
- passion
"It's essentially beachcombing," said Dr David.
"We go for whatever we think is likely to be of interest. There are certain sites to look for -- basically it's down to experience."
If it is wrong to patent materials obtained in this manner there is an easy solution. Why don't you go beachcombing for the cure to the next big disease and release the rights to the world at large.
Oh wait, you don't have millions of dollars to blow scouring the world for pools of slime that probably don't contain anything, but which might contain the cure for AIDS? Neither do these guys - hence the patent...
If the person who discovered penicillin patented it, where would medicine be today?
Just where we are now - patents only last about 10 years after the product is developed enough to relase...
"Found" in a rock pool isn't exactly how it all came about either. They have probably looked thousands of places cataloging millions of strains of bacteria. Its not like they wandered up to a pool and the damn thing had a sign on it.
If its so "obvious" that it should be common knowledge just because it was found in a pool, how come it wasn't stumbled upon before? The fact that it has been found now is good indication that drug companies have been encouraged to look for such things.
I do think it would be an interesting economic model though to put a bounty on certain types of drugs, say $2 billion for a antibiotic-resistant staph antibiotic. When funded by the whole world, numbers like $10billion for major drugs wouldn't be that high. Insurance companies would likely offer bounties as well.
t
I don't condone price gouging by the pharmaceutical industry, but if this product is expensive and it prompts doctors to use it as a last resort, then it certainly will forstall the day when natural selection delivers us bacteria that are resistant to it.
yea i stole your sig- whats the big deal, it sucked anyway.
Let's see. Somebody had a disease. They had no way to cure it themselves. You did not give them the disease, but you do have a way to cure it. Why is it immoral for you to ask them to pay you for it?
Oh, you're saying it's immoral for you to try to prevent someone else from stealing your method to cure the disease and giving it to the sick person for free.
So why would you spend any time and effort to find that cure in the first place?
"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
One of the major misconceptions about pharmaceuticals is that "To make this pill costs about $0.12, why are they $15 each?" The problem is that this stuff requires years of research.
This stuff isn't like coming up with an idea in computer technology where it mostly requires a lightbulb to appear over your head for a really good product to be invented, you see, in medical research, it's not about being able to come up with good ideas, those are easy, such as "AIDS cure" and "Cancer cure," it's trying mostly random things, fueled by only minor insight, and many years of trial and error to come upon something truly useful.
I'm not sure what the regulatory process is behind something like a bacterial antibody is, but if it's anything like drug research, once it's discovered, you're looking at another 10+ years of preclinical and clinical trials. Literally billions of dollars must be invested before joe consumer can use it. And that's for a successful run. There are drugs that make it to the end of 10 year trials, and fail, with billions going down the drain.
*THIS* is what you pay for, not the manufacturing cost.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Remember claritin before the FDA deemed it fine to go over the counter? It was stupifying the price drop.
I have to say I'm mostly (but not entirely) on the Pharmecuticals side on this issue. You are forgetting a few things
1) the manufacturing of these drugs *once you know how* is generally pretty cheap & easy to do.
2) Discovering these drugs in the first place is the product of some very serious, long-term, hard and *expensive* science.
3) Often finding a way to turn a discovery like this into a drug that is fit for human consumption is perhaps even more difficult and *expensive* - Penicillin was discovered in 1929 but it wasn't until 1945 that someone figured out how to use it as a drug. It usually takes several years of *very expensive* research before they figure out how to use a discovery like this as a drug.
4) Once they have a drug it takes several years of difficult and *very expensive* trials to prove it's effectiveness & safety to the FDA
5) Not all of their expensive initial research, & expensive development of drugs end up being anything.
6) The whole time they've been doing this their patent has been active and ticking down, they have a few years left in their patent to make back their enormous investment. (though they *may/may not* be able to get a patent extension that compensates them for the time it takes to get FDA approval. So, they may get at best 17 years to get a return on their investment or if they fail to get an extension they may have only a couple of years.
7) They are making drugs there is a *huge* risk even after years of *expensive* research and getting FDA approval that a drug may do nasty things to the user over the long term or to a tiny fraction of the population - the result could be lawsuits that costs BILLIONS. It is important to note that this harm doesn't have to be proven scientifically it has to be "proven" in a court of law - One scientist with a pet theory as an expert witness and a handful (out of millions) that have some unexplained syndrome and all the profits from all the drugs produced by hundreds of scientists over dozens of years may end up in the pockets of a few dozen lawyers that "worked" for at most four or five years to "earn" it.
The response to all this is that Pharmecutical companies are *very* profitable - true but they are engaged in a fairly risky investment as a matter of economics high risk has to be balanced with high rewards, otherwise the investment goes elsewhere. If they operated without any profit at all the drugs would be roughly 8-25% less (looking at last years profits vs. revenues) but that obviously woudn't take into account any risks or explain why anyone would bother to undertake the years of research outside of pure altruism - a fine sentiment but not that great as a motivator.
The other response is "if it's a life saving drug it's morally wrong to profit from it". My response to those folks is to ask them if they are willing to make such huge investments themselves without profiting from them. Would YOU be willing to go to school, get an advanced chemistry degree, spend decades of research into the slime floating around rock pools and NOT GET PAID for it.
I work in a small company offering services to the pharmaceutical (aka "life science companies").
First off, it comes as absolutely NO suprise that they are keeping this close to heart. These people keep their birthdates and surnames close to heart. The only place you can possibly find a higher level of paranoia is probably at the annual DefCon.
Second, the pharmaceutical industry NEEDS TO TAKE OUT PATENTS TO SURVIVE.
Developing one new drug costs hundreds of millions of dollars. If the drug turns out to be a complete failure near the end of the project (i.e. clinical testing on animals/humans), then they've wasted those hundreds of millions of dollars. That means they have to make a decent profit on their successes, otherwise one or two failures would send them straight out of business.
If they didn't patent and protect their discoveries that would mean some other company could just start producing the drug themselves, and as they didn't spend all that money on developing it, competitive pricing is not exactly a problem and again the inventor is driven out of business.
Either have your government use some of your tax money to fund this sort of research, or just accept the facts:
1. We need medicine.
2. Medicine is insanely expensive to develop.
3. That means it will eventually cost you.
All the people that are nagging on about how "all medicine should be freely available to everyone around the world", please take a moment and understand that if it was free then there wouldn't be any medicine in the first place. Yes the pharmaceutical industry does make a good profit, but it's needed to finance the failures.
Bull$hit, I say!
If you'd do your research, as opposed to the kneejerk disgust with doctors many Americans have developed, the predominant cause of antibiotic resistance is: LIVESTOCK!
WHAT?!?
Yes, A MAJOR cause of antibiotic resistance is the highly common practice of farmers mixing antibiotics with their feed. A steady dose of antibiotics helps the animals spare some energy for getting fat and happy, instead of fighting off common infections, which means more meat for the farmers to sell. A hell of a lot more antibiotics get used by dairy cattle than by snot-nosed five-year-olds, exposing a lot more bugs to antibiotics than they ever could. As a mater of fact, vancomycin, one of the last, great "superantibiotics," capable of taking out MRSA, (sometimes called a "flesh-eating" bacteria) is gonna be undermined soon, because one of the "feed supplements" being used is very similar in structure and function to Vanco.
Many doctors are trying hard to conserve the "big gun" antibiotics, which are HELLA expensive, for when they're actually needed, but that's occuring more and more. Plus, the fact that patients often demand an antibiotic when they've got a cold (which is a virus, and doesn't get TOUCHED by even the best antibiotic), and you've got a tragedy in the making.
Not flaming, not trolling, just one Medical Student's experience.