Slashdot Mirror
Violating A Patent As Moral Choice
kuzmich writes "The Taiwanese government has announced that it will violate patent laws to manufacture a drug that can help fight bird flu virus. In doing so, they have spelled out their reasoning very clearly: 'We have tried our best to negotiate with Roche, it means we have shown our goodwill to Roche and we appreciate their patent. But to protect our people is the utmost important thing'. Not being in Taiwan, this makes me wonder how bad the situation would have to be for some of the other governments to follow a path of violating patent and copyright laws for the benefit of the general population. Are there precedents, procedures for doing so?"
Patent laws are far more important than human lives; what gives them the right to do this?
Just kidding, of course. Good for Taiwan. Patent laws should not cause the death of people.
They have their priorities straight. Stopping a potential pandemic is more important than not stepping on a businessman's toes.
It seems to me that in a case such as this, it would be perfectly acceptable to invoke the principle of Eminent Domain. If this isn't a situation that involved the public's interest, I don't know what is!
No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, isn't it, eh? Beautiful plumage!
"laws are a human institution!" sure they'll get in trouble, but why not do what's best for humanity?
This happened routinely during WWII in the US with patents and forced licensing agreements for technology deemed crucial to the war effort. Even my own great grandfather's manufacturing business (springs) was confiscated due to his ethnic background.
And no vaccine...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Good luck to 'em all, I say; saving lives trumps patents.
What has the United States got to do with it?
Roche is a Swiss company.
Wikipedia sez:
...an interpretive statement, the Doha Declaration, was issued in November 2001, which indicated that TRIPs should not prevent states from dealing with public health crises. Since then PhRMA, the United States and, to a lesser extent, other developed nations, have been working to minimise the effect of the declaration. TRIPs provides for "compulsory licencing", which allows a national government to issue a licence for the production of drugs without the consent of the patent owner as long as those drugs are primarily for the domestic market. A 2003 agreement loosened the domestic market requirement, and allows developing countries to export to other countries where there is a national health problem as long as drugs exported are not part of a commercial or industrial policy [1]. Drugs exported under such a regime may be packaged or colored differently to prevent them from prejudicing markets in the developed world.
Okay, so a philosopher, a philologist, and a philatelist walk into a bar...
First they make you spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in regulatory rescosts to pass their tests.
Then they allow tort laws to get out of control, letting you get sued for billions.
They make you wait a decade for approval (or not).
They offer you a monopoly on your invention.
Then they take it back so their friends and family in pharmaceuticals can make it with zero of your costs involved.
"Bird flu has killed at least 60 people in Asia since December 2003" Sixty people died in two years, oh no, if we don't cure it soon we'll all be dead!!! No offence, but is this really something we need to be worrying about?? Doesn't normal flu kill more people per year?
Roche is Swiss. I'm sure China, mainland or Taiwanese, quakes in fear at the thought of the Swiss navy launching an assault.
Yes, but as the US tends to be the world policeman of IP law, retribution might come in the form of threats to stop defending them. There are, however, a couple of reasons the US probably wouldn't do this, which I described in a response to the parent post.
Now, the US Constitution guarantees reasonable compensation for seized property. This doesn't have to be cash. It can be some other equitable consideration.
For example, if Disney would surrender almost all of their old television cartoons and theatrical movies into the public domain (where they should have lapsed years ago), the US could reciprocate and give a *permanent* protection for a few of their most prized revenue source characters: Mickey Mouse and Disney's Ariel (the Little Mermaid). The population could make whatever artistic mashup they wanted from the footage, but they couldn't claim the Mouse as theirs or claim the Mouse speaks for them. If I understand, this is somewhat like the protection Britain has given Peter Pan: it's a special cultural treasure and is handled different from other properties.
Another example is for pharmaceuticals: break an effective AIDS drug patent, and we'll let you keep a certain lifestyle drug like Viagra for a longer period.
Unfortunately, Disney and Pfizer have bought enough Senators to choke the Panama Canal, and so the trade in all of their products will be protected nearly forever anyway, even without surrendering the cultural feedstock and the life-saving inventions to society as a whole.
[
Imagine that! The Swiss army armed with those deadly Swiss Army Knives!!!
Brazil broke the patents for some anti-aids drugs. First, we negotiate the prices with the labs, they refuse to provide an acceptable price, then the patent were broke for the sake of thousands of people. "Under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, a nation can break drug patents if there is a national emergency." At the time, we receive nice comments from leaders from all over the world, including Tony Blair in an MTV program. read more on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4059147.stm http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/americas/08/22/ aids.drug/
This is my first comment, and sorry about the poor english.
The WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) allows compulsory license of medicines for public health reasons. The Wikipedia entry gives a decent overview in the "access to essential medicines" section.
This is a hot topic in the international trade community for developing countries, especially in relation to AIDS drugs.
Spoken like one truly ignorant of history.
The fundamental purpose of government is to protect the rights of citizens. And if you think life is more important than rights, you're outvoted daily by the thousands who risk their lives to leave governments who don't protect their rights.
You've piqued my curiosity - if the drug industry doesn't foot the research bill, who does?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
It doesn't appear that Taiwan honors foreign patents via treaty: http://www.bpmlegal.com/pctco.html http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/plt/ , but I may be wrong.
The US has done basically the same thing with US patents which have "national security" implications. In the US, the Constitutional authority for patents lies in Congress, so Congress is perfectly free to decide whether patent protection should/is offered for such things. I don't profess to know such specifics about Taiwan.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
A Patent is a grant of property from the Sovereign (i.e. the legal state, whether that be the "People" or the "Crown" or the "Republic"). Most people define "property" as having a set of legal (usually exclusive) rights to possess, enjoy, and dispose of some thing. All property flows from the Sovereign. The Sovereign either grants it directly (as in a patent for land or intellectual property) or he recognizes it through enacting laws. The "Real" in real estate does not mean true, but litteraly "Royal". You may like to think that its *your* property because of some moral reason (like you earned it or made it yourself), but legally it is only yours because the Sovereign says so through his laws.
Since property and patents are at the pleasure of the Sovereign, the Sovereign is free to revoke it at any time. This is called escheat. In fact, if you die without an heir, your property automatically escheats to the Sovereign.
So, a Soveriegn of a State, can legally revoke any patent of his own granting at any time. Other than because of a treaty obligation, a Sovereign State need not recognize or allow a Patent granted by another state.
Here in the US, our Founders were well aware (and sometimes the personal victims) of the abuses and escheats at the hands of the British Sovereign. So all the above was modified by our constitution which says that property may not be seized except with "due process of law". The Congress has also set up horrible "patent and copyright" laws. Obviously, Taiwan has different laws.
Excuse my ignorance, I'm from the US. What is this "benefit of the general population" you speak of?
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
Yeah marketting is expensive look at the annual reports.
On page 60 of Mercks 2004 annual report
2004 Merck spent
$4.9B on Materials and Manufacturing
$7.3B on Marketting & Administration
$4B on R&D
To be fair the administration expenses should be a large part of that expense, but it seems clear that more money is spent on researching and producing the drugs than selling them.
"Risky move, considering the support of the United States is what keeps them from being a province of China..."
The US seems to play both sides of this. USA has no embassy in Taiwan. Unless I missed something, Taiwan is not a UN member. If China actually took action the world, not just the US, would do nothing, just as they did nothing for Tibet and nothing for Hong Kong, just as nobody raised any opposition over the US in Iraq.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Ayn Rand would love this one.
The US defends the interest of corporations, not people.
American corporations have interests aligned with patent law.
Get it?
Drug research costs a lot of money. I know Drug companies can get greedy at times, but even if you were running at cost you would be spending tens of millions on research.
If this was a one shot magic bullet cure for cancer, aids, ect I think few would object to the suspension of the normal rules.
Unfortunatly, Aids gets resistant rapidly to the current generation of drugs, so you have to have a constant ammount of research going into it (more money).
But if the drugs are outragiously expensive, people die.
If no one pays the drug companies for the research, they might abandon it and more people would die.
I think a balance needs to be struck, either with government funding or an agreement to sell the current drugs nearer to what they actually cost the companies.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
What you have here is a case of two evils. To ignore patent law to save people, or to ignore people to give into greed. The drug companies are out to make money. Not something anyone should readily discourage. However, its also a fact that many companies are doing so at the great expanse of lives or what value there drug really has.
Point in fact, for any specific drug. There is generally as much marketing money spent as R&D money spent. Often times quieting the facts of studies made or of even the true effectiveness of said drugs.
As well, often times the base research for said patents comes from Tax dollars.
Now, evils aside of the "Innocent" victims.
Bird Flu and it's variants is feared to be a global killer should it ever make it into the population at large. To not allow it to be reigned in early on would be a crime committed by all and any soverign nation. How would you like to see 1/10th of the US nationality wiped out because we wouldn't allow anyone access to such drugs? (Probably an over dramatization, but historically has happened)
Also, would research really go away??? The answer is Hell No. Research will still go on, by those who care. It went on before there where Biological Patents. It would go on after too. Penecillan didn't come about because of potentially making a multi millionairre out of the CEO.
Our Patent system is currently extremely innaccurate on what its true purpose is, which is just compenstaion. There should be a feasibilty limit on what anyone can charge for a patent in relation to its true development costs and difficulty of Idea.
Yes. St. Thomas Aquinas addresses this in ST II-II.66.7. "It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need." Although this would not be a "secret" taking (it's in the headlines!), the principle still replies. IF (and I stress the "if" because I have no idea what the price tag was) Roche is truly being unreasonable in their demands, and IF (ditto) the need to act now is truly extreme, then the Taiwanese government does have the right to act in violation of the patent.
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
That's the language all English speaking jurisdictions use. So why choose such an emotionally laden word like violation ??
Australia4 5/top.htm
PATENTS ACT 1990 (Cth)
Chapter 11--Infringement
http://www.scaleplus.law.gov.au/html/pasteact/1/5
USAs c_sup_01_35_10_III_20_28.html
CHAPTER 28--INFRINGEMENT OF PATENTS
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode35/u
UK
s60 - s71 Infringement
http://www.jenkins-ip.com/patlaw/index.htm
IANAL, but this sounds like an appropriate use of eminent domain.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
The USA did this to Bayer in the early 20th century (WWI?) with aspirin. IIRC, Bayer held German and US patents on the drug. The US gummint decided that the drug was vital to national security and directed other folks to manufacture it. Bayer was never compensated for its loss, and came close to closing. Bayer never regained US market share, either.
Well, no, but Roche might feel less inclined to import their drugs to Taiwan in the future. That's not necessarily great for Taiwan.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
"The majority of the expenses associated with new drug discovery are actually made in the public sector - by Universities and so forth."
0 05-03-17.1145.pdf
Private R&D spending on pharmaceuticals exceeds public R&D spending. This is actually true for R&D in general ($132 billion federal vs. $190 billion industry), and it's true for pharmaceuticals ($30 billion federal vs. $49 billion industry). For the first 3 figures, see here:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/rd06main.htm [chapters 2 & 4]
For the last figure, see here:
http://www.phrma.org/publications/publications//2
The last is an industry organization, but r&d spending is part of companies' public SEC filings and the figures are in line with the aggregate numbers.
It's a fallacy that public and private pharmaceutical r&d are substitutes. Public r&d tends to focus on basic science while private r&d focuses on specific drug development and testing. Here it is from the horse's mouth:
http://ott.od.nih.gov/Reports/211856ottrept.pdf
The public sector would be just as good at developing drugs as it would be at making cars and televisions (see Union, Soviet).
"these additional resources are a *fraction* of the total increase in drug prices that result from the patents they are awarded"
If patents over-compensate drug companies, then we'd see a lot more entry into the (apparently very lucrative) drug business by new firms until these extra-ordinary returns are competed away. Even with patent protection, lucrative business models attract entry by competitors until excess profits are competed away.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Drug companies like to whine about how much money they spend in R&D for a given drug - but they don't spend that much money. The money goes into marketing, and into profit. Developing a fancy shmancy drug might involve a 6 million dollar large scale surveys, it might involve 20 senior scientists and 40 assistants for 2 years. If the senior scientists make 200,000 a year and the assistants make 100,000 lets say R&D salary is 16 million then. Perhaps there are 20 million in facilities costs, property taxes on those facilities, which is a one time cost for the company as they can reuse their facilities. being enormously generous, and factoring in lots of mishaps, lets say there is a 10 million dollar budget for materials - including buying time on electron scanners, glassware, test monkeys, cable TV for the break room, etc, This still all adds up for a startup R&D cost of 52 million dollars, and a running cost of 32 million dollars. Ive probably overlooked lots of costs, and been naive about others, lets jump the R&D cost up to 100 million dollars just to be safe - this still doesn't require 40 years of price gouging patent control to be profitable. Rather, companies skimp on the R&D and spend on the advertising. Their ultimate goal is to sell drugs - whether those drugs are better or worse than the competition is 80% in the mind of the consumer. If a new class of drugs comes out, to compete, they can just buy a patent from a smaller group. The money goes into competitive advertising, the R&D that sells drugs is in the minds of the consumer. GJ Thailand!
We are now. I know many older Americans skipping or cutting down on their meds because they can't afford them. People without insurance can't afford brand name drugs as it is. The reality is people are dying now because they can't afford insurance and proper health care, including some of those 500 dollar prescriptions.
Perhaps you meant "many, many drugs for people who have insurance will never get developed." Which might be true. All in all, I think having fewer drugs more widely affordable would be a step ahead of where we are today.
If those windfall profits were actually going into R&D, I'd have more sympathy for the big name drug makers. But the bulk of those profits are going toward enhancing shareholder value, making rich people even more rich. Otherwise how can drug makers ship drugs to Canada who then sells them back to our own citizens for less than we can buy them here? Canadian pharmacies are still making a profit. The only way that math works is the certain knowledge that we're getting boned on drug prices.
What you say is true from one narrow perspective but not on the macro scale. Drugs are likely only to be the first patents ignored on the world market. Technology might be next. Perhaps you've noticed the really hot tech doesn't premiere here anymore. The new buzz phrase is "No word on when it will be available in the US." Maybe never.
As our patent system becomes ever more litigious and retarded more countries are going to be tempted to bust technology patents for use in their own country.
And, of course, we can't take on patent reform without first making sure all those people in bankruptcy because of catastrophic medical expenses go to credit counseling and pay back their credit card bills and that we shield those poor gun makers from legal liability. Those are obviously hugely important compared to poor people dying, and old people we're almost dead anyway, but I'm sure our Republican servants of the people will get to that patent thing just any day now.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Charles Schumer, the senior senator from NY, has been big on this in the last month (and has been big on affordable drug policies for years...) First he said it was inexusable that Roche was putting their profits ahead of widespread safety, and last week said that Roche was being unreasonable in refusing to take steps to make the drug more widely available (not stepping up production, not meeting with other potential producers). Schumer threatened Congressional action to ignore the patent if there was no action from Roche in 30 days. Now it sounds like Roche relented, at least a little in the US market, and has agreed to step up production and at least talk with other potential producers about licensing.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
I was told that Barry Marshall and Robin Warren's discovery that peptic ulcers could be frequently cured by antibiotics instead of maintained with proton-pump inhibitors was suppressed until some major patent or another ran out and the discovery was no longer a threat to someone's monopoly.
But that's a rather weak case, so never mind.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The drug would be affordable for Taiwan to treat the DISEASE, but that isn't what they are looking for.
So far this "epidemic" has claimed 60 lives. While it is tragic for those families, it isn't a return of the plague.
The disease is not currently jumping from bird -> human except in cases of HEAVY contact, and there is no human -> human jumping.
In previous "bird flu" epidemics, illegal versions of the drugs were used to treat birds by poor farmers rightfully fearing losing their livelihood. As a result, the remaining disease was resistant to the treatment, and previous treatments were no longer valid. There is an article in this month's Fortune on the issue...
Basically, if you keep the price high, people (or their governments) will pay for it to save lives, but not over use it to the point of treating birds...
It's not simple, and that's without debating the merits of our current private sector drug industry...
Alex
You mention the need for patents in order to protect "the future"
I think you are underestimating the possibilities of this bird flu.
it could wipe out world stock markets for a decade.
Its in your interests for all governments to catch this one early and effectively, whatever methods they use.
If it appears, then there will be desperate attempts to stop it, for example you can be sure that any country that has a pandemic and is isolateable will have anything that moves over its boarders terminated with extreme predudice. Maybe the rest of the world might agree to wipe the place out with nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately if a human transmissible version of this virus appears then even this will be pointless. Only half a million Americans died in the 1918 pandemic and 50 million worldwide. There was no air travel at the time so it wouldnt be suprising if these figures were a hundred times higher for a pandemic today, it would be everywhere within a week.
The USA is not exactly shining with glory over its disaster preparedness planning since the debacle in New Orleans. I hope that the federal government that many seem to so despise is prepared to manufacture a flu vaccine for you personally. In the UK the government has just announced contracts to make 120 million doses of vaccine, of course they wont be able to make them all for the first wave, but it should be three months before the second wave and that should allow time for at least the surviving medical staff, army and police to get a dose.
Mind you life is full of risks, the media delights in scaring us with the latest one.
Some we live with and over time grow complacent about. Californians have the next big earthquake, New Orleans have had their Leves breached and the Kashmiris have their earthquake. It is instructive to compare the effect of catastrophe on different places, a thousand deaths in Louisiana, 45 thousand in Pakistan and few if any from the little quakes in California.
The thing that appears to have made a difference in these cases is the degree of preparedness. Californian building codes verses Pakistani ones (admittedly they couldnt afford much better ones) and New Orleans mostly got out in time. Also the tsunami which would have had much less effect if people had an hours warning to walk inland.
A bird flu inflenza is a very real threat, by this time next year a third of us could be dead.
Pandemic illnesses and in fact most viral illnesses have been found to have come from cross species transmission, their danger comming from the fact that they have slowly mutated in an animal species into something that the human immune system knows nothing of. The virus itself may once have transfered from human to bird. So when it crosses the interspecies boundary we have no remembered defence, this is the case with bird flu. Up to a third of the individuals who have caught it directly from birds have died. All that remains is for an individual to be carrying a normal easily transmitted human virus to catch bird flu and for the two kinds of virus to exchange components and you get a human influenza that carries the nasty behaviour of bird flu. try a google search for antigenic drift or just have a look at CDC.
I dont know what the risk is of the two virii cross pollinating in this way - but the microbiologists seem worried that this will happen. You would have to find out what the probability of this is before you can say whether a pandemic is imminent and I dont think anybody has reliable figures on this. Governments seem to think it inevitable.
However consider the known risk factors that the media get excited over that we all live with eg Nuclear power station melt down, heart disease, cancer, food dyes, various slightly suspect chemicals in products we come in daily contact with (that give a rat cancer if you feed the rat its own body weight of the chemical), pesticides, being run over by a bus, being struck by lightning etc
- none of these are likely to destroy our
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
FYI, patents are a personal monopoly granted by the government, not a natural law property right. They are not anything like regular property that has natural physical limits in supply and demand and no expiration date. Properties are about controlling limited resources, not about controlling people. They are not a valad property right any more than slaves on the plantation in 1850, and considering all the people they kill by locking out cures for diseases, and life saving innovations that were likely to happen in natural progression of things anyhow, they are agruably worse.
The most crazy part is that people say they promote R&D when patents really kill it. Patnets skew R&D so that researchers don't collaberate, and so that cheap inexpensive pratical cures to diseases are shuned and even attacked.
Seriously, if you steal my car I think I would be very violated and deprived of my transportation, but if you make a copy of it - hell have 10! The notion that copying and immitation is a form of stealing is bullshit morality, and the people who impose it are really the ones who are immoral.
During the 'anthrax scare' our health minister bought a load of generic anthrax vaccine, even though it was patented by another company. The news was talking earlier in the week about the possibility of doing it again in this case. They mentioned an Indian company that's already manufacturing a generic version of Tamiflu. But they also said that Roche is loooking at licensing their drug to generic drug manufacturers so they can still make a buck (or 50 million) even though they can't manufacture enough of the drug.
This is not an abstract statistic. Real people, your friends and family included, will get the virus, have fever, cough blood and die within a few days... simple as that. I've heard that 98 of 100 will survive the bird flu pandemic... seemingly not bad, but do you realize what that means? Think of a hundred people you know about (I'm sure you can) now think of the bird flu randomly killing any two of those people... are you ok with that? This is the future we are going to be dealing with all too soon.
This is why any discussion as to what incentive there is for drug companies to develop vaccination to the bird flu seems so ridiculous to me. First off, bird flu (when it happens) will only last for one season... no matter how you slice it, there could never be any real market (as there is with AIDS) to continuously fend off bird flu long-term... it is an immediate, one-time emergency. Second, with the first point in mind, there doesn't always have to be a financial benefit to making a life-saving vaccine. There are plenty of ways of making money on other drugs that do provide continuous streams of revenue (like heartburn pills, anti-depressants... almost anything, really). Here's an idea for the drug companies: relinquish your patent, work with the government willingly to save lives from this global pandemic. Let taxes offset the cost of production and offset the rest of the production by jacking up the prices on your other, non-critical drugs. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I'd gladly welcome a kick in my taxes and pay an extra $10 per box of Prilosec (or whatnot) to know that my loved ones and I will be safe from this coming pandemic.
Food for thought: The children and the old people will be the safest from the bird flu because of their weaker immune systems. It will be people in the prime of their lives who will die the most quickly and violently because the bird flu attacks the lungs and a healthy immune system, in trying to kill the bird flu, will also attack your lungs! This is a gruesome prospect, the likes of which the most of us have (hopefully) never before had to deal with.
I sincerely believe that we as a people can prepare for and prevent this, but first we have to make the decision to do so.
"Tiawan can afford the drug. The amount of money in the corruption-fueled grey economy of corrupt officials is more than enough to buy the drugs....It's not about lack of money in Tiawan, but about priorities of spending"
I just wish they would fix those priorities. Someday, I hope to hear the following exchange in a session of parliament in Taiwan:
"All right guys, we've got a serious crisis on our hands; we need to reset our budget priorities. Here's our priority list from last year:
1. Defense.
2. Corruption.
3. Social Security
4. Education
Now, the drug company is asking for a lot of money for this bird flu drug, and the money is going to need to come from somewhere. Personally, I'd like to see us cut back on our current Item Number Two a bit. Who's with me?"
[An awkward silence.]
"Come on guys, I know we all really like buying big houses for our friends and such, but could we maybe just, you know, ease up on it for a year or two? We'll just get this bird flu thing knocked out of the way and we can get back to business before you even notice anything's happened."
A murmur runs through the room. It grows louder. Heads shake, people are seen scribbling things on notepads. Finally, Li Fau-Ching, the oldest, most respected MP, stands up, and says, "I'd like to propose a 30% cut in corruption!" Gasps are heard on the floor. Another MP stands up, and says "I'll second". Another stands, and another. Somewhere, an upbeat pop tune starts playing. The bird flu drug advocate, a dashing young freshman with a doctor girlfriend, smiles. Maybe Taiwan can change, he thinks. Maybe.
one hundred twenty
is just enough characters
to write a haiku
I just want to be clear on this: are pharmaceutical megacorps good or bad ? The way I see it, they are effectively imposing a ransom on health. Why are drugs so expensive ? Because they are in demand. It's basically like saying "If you don't pay, you're gonna die. So exactly how much money have you got ?" And they jack up the price accordingly.
Health care and medicinal research should either be government-communized so everyone can have access to proper treatment and medicine, or shot to hell so as to skim off the weak and purify the breed through natural selection.
Now I still hate humans and wish most of them would die a horrible death for my primal amusement, but I think I'd rather see fully subsidized health care for all, and toss these glorified drug dealers back into the ranks of the working poor.
The less rich people there are, the less poor people there are. Now I'm not saying to swing into full-on communism, but maybe as a modern society we could find an efficient mix of various ideologies in order to benefit humankind as a whole. Capitalism at the expense of lives only breeds more hatred.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Taiwan does have the money, but the BBC article failed to point out that Roche has been insufficient in supplying Tamiflu to meet worldwide demand. Taiwanese government plans to address the supply issue by manufacturing the drug in solutions. This has at least two benefits:
Beyond meeting the supply, Taiwanese government does plan to compensate Roche for what Tamiflu is worth. As I understand it, a negotiation is still going on, but it is true that Taiwanese government has went ahead to produce the drug. BBC does not make it clear either.
I once had a signature.
Do you know why Roche, and so many other pharmaceutical companies, are based in Switzerland? Because when they were founded there Switzerland had no intellectual property laws and did not recognize any such foreign laws. So Roche, Ciba, and the rest set themselves up in Switzerland ripping off patented formulas from the UK and elsewhere.
Now that Roche have got themselves a nice protectionism program going with the patent system, they don't think any other company, or nation in this case, should do to them what they did to their UK competitors. If any of the founding bandits were still haunting the boardroom at Roche, they would recognize the supreme justice of the current situation.
What is particularly unfortunate is that many drugs (including tamiflu and the superior inhaled drug relenza) were invented by relatively small biotechs. (OK, Gilead isn't small any more, but Biota is *tiny*). Small biotechs are absolutely reliant on the fees and royalties they generate through licensing their inventions to Big Pharma, who have the money to get them through the FDA approval process and marketed.
Break a patent for Roche or GSK, they'll be annoyed but hardly notice the change in cash-flow. The biotech, however, will lose its sole cash-flow life-line. Biota are collaborating with Japanese pharma Sankyo to produce a second-generation antiviral for influenza that looks like being needed once-weekly for both prophylaxis and treatment. Be a real pity to destroy promising biotech-level research like that by cutting profits at the Big Pharma end of town.
Disclaimer: Yes I work for a biotech - own shares in them too.
So far as I understand it, the reasoning isn't to take profit away from Roche. The problem is that while Tamiflu is very effective at preventing the flu, there simply isn't enough should H5N1 mutate into a human -> human transferable virus. A single dose of Tamiflu will protect a single person from contracting the flu for a single day. Given that the typical flu season is roughly 100 days, give or take, each person would need 100 doses to protect themselves. Right now, the Canadian gov't has stockpiled approximately 22 million doses. As of July of this year, Canada's population, according to the CIA world factbook, is 32,805,041 people, that's less than 1 dose per person. Canada alone would need 100x the current amount to protect the majority of it's population from a pandemic of H5N1, let alone the rest of the world. The patent would be broken to allow for more companies to create the drug, rather than Roche alone who simply can't meet the current demand.
They are some of the most unethical businesses around. DOes anyone realise that legally a drug company could have found a good cure for HIV, or Cancer, and decide through profit analysis that it is worth more to them to keep treating the disease rather than cure it. They patent the procedure/enzyme/Gene and then no one else has access to their research, or can produce a product based on that patent. I wonder what sort of negotiations Taiwan put forward which were rejected by Roche. I wonder what price they put on the drug? Could they not have agreed under very specific circumstances to allow the creation of the drug? Is it that if there IS a pandemic too bad for the rest of the world if Roche can't produce enough of this drug, at the end of the pandemic they'll make billions so good for them? Is that what it's about? Human lives too often become reduced to numbers on a profit-loss chart. I say good for Taiwan.
-Gel214th
Now, the NIH has made a great many mistakes, but if you think the NIH even *approaches* the corruption and incompetence of the drug industry, you're from Mars.
A government agency is more competent than private industry? You've never worked for government, have you?
at the same time, government financing of R&D should, as a policy question, be expanded to take up the slack.
So, instead of the funding being voluntary (through private industry research) you want it to be involuntary (through tax dollars). Thanks, but I think government taxing authority is far too out of control as it is; I certainly don't want to give them more of my paycheck.
*is it* a capitalist solution, or not?
Of course it isn't. That's obvious on its face.
I stand by my statement that public financing of R&D is less of a market distortion than are patents, and therefore is more capitalist. Why and in what way am I wrong?
That's a contradiction in terms. Capitalism requires voluntary transactions; government taxes at the point of a gun, an inherently involuntary transaction. Worse, no market forces of any sort are used to decide the distribution of resources, including manpower (your bureaucrats certainly aren't going to be the best people for the job).
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Fortune ran an article this month on this very subject. Had a nice scientific angle to it, rather than just an emotional-political bias. Also illustrates that lovely topic "natural selection" or "evolution" to be perfectly rude.
The gist of it is, if you dump Tamiflu into the environment to save a bunch of chickens, which is what the Asian governments are discussing [not, as you might think, to save a few sidereal infected humans] you're going to destroy Tamiflu's effectiveness. To put this in perfect perspective for you, if THEY push Tamiflu into the environment when the virus hasn't even crossed over to a human pandemic state, the virus will adapt, and by the time it's crossed over and YOU are SICK AND DYING, Tamiflu will have zero affect on the virus, and YOU will have no defense, making your chance of death about 25% based on historical projections. So Monday, when you get to work, look around, and imagine 1/4 of those people not there because some fucking QUACK in ASIA had to save some DUCKS.
Some cultural suffering v. My survival = ROAST DUCK Here's more background material from Foreign Affairs, written by some smart people that may shed additional light on the subject.
We do, when we need a laugh.
-The Military
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere