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Researchers Work Around Hepatitis Drug Patent
Several readers let us know about a pair of British researchers who found a workaround to patents covering drugs used to treat hepatitis C. The developers intend to produce a drug cheap enough to supply to people in the poorest parts of the world. The scientists found another way to bind a sugar to interferon, producing a drug they say should be as long-lasting and effective as those sold (at $14,000 for a year's supply) by patent holders Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough. Clinical trials could begin by 2008. The article quotes developer Sunil Shaunak of Imperial College London: "We in academic medicine can either choose to use our ideas to make large sums of money for small numbers of people, or to look outwards to the global community and make affordable medicines."
Before the arguments about the effectiveness of this drug compared to the patented one, the morality of patents on medicine and the soviet russia jokes break out; I'd like to show my respect for these people. It's great to see this effort!
Isn't it pathetic that researchers or bussinesses try to find workarounds for patents? This kind of news shows that patent ruling is totally flawed by design. I'm in favor of giving inventor a commercial advantage for his/her invention. This can be tax reduction for product using this patent etc. But giving inventor a monopolistic right is stupid however you evaluate the idea.
The statement, "We in academic medicine can either choose to use our ideas to make large sums of money for small numbers of people, or to look outwards to the global community and make affordable medicines," is fallacious. Here's why.
1. Drug companies have to turn a profit; otherwise, they don't produce the drugs.
2. The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug -- the drug's social utility (this is basic economics).
3. Once the drug companies patents run out, anyone can produce generic medicines cheaply.
Large profits give drug companies an incentive to develop the most useful medicines (the more profit, the more useful it is), and bringing a drug to market is very, very costly, especially in the US with the f*cked up FDA and all that. However, patents do expire after a time, and then everyone can benefit from the cheap medicines.
Look at it this way: What's better -- not having a drug at all, or having the drug be very costly for about 14 years and then having cheap generic equivalents? (While you can make the argument that a specific drug X or Y would still be developed in the absence of profit motives, this is overlooking the fact that reduced profits mean a reduced incentive to produce drugs in the future. This won't apply to every single drug, but rather is a statement about a general trend which does have exceptions.)
In summary:
We don't care if it is a cheaper more affordable treatment that would benefit all of humanity - we're going to make sure that someone will profit from it and not give a flying f**k about the people who need the treatment.
For example Australian company Biota created and patented Relenza for treating bird flu, then Roche modified their product slightly to produce and patent Tamiflu.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
You missed the profits. Don't forget the silly profits. Almost £7 billion profit for Glaxosmithkline. You read that right - £7,000,000,000 - or $14,000,000,000.
They're suggesting making cheap drugs, keeping the patents away from big companies, and having clinical testing subsidised by the countries where they'd be used (which seems fair if they aren't trying to profiteer), as well as developing drugs on obscure illnesses which the west doesn't have (and big business ignores). It's a win/win situation. Stop making a noble effort sound like something bad.
You've swallowed the propaganda hook line and sinker. The view you espouse is not rational but religious. A product of your cloistered upbringing.
There are other models which work. Cooperation also works. Need proof? Just look at Free Software, Linux, ... Ask Microsoft where their most serious competition is coming from.
What you are promoting is racketeering and monopoly, not capitalism. Racketeering and monopoly do not promote competition or progress.
Drug companies spend far more money on advertising than they do on research and development. The next time you watch "Wheel of Fortune", you might realize that the billions of dollars being spent pushing viagra and nexium on everyone are NOT making their way to fundamental advances in science.
2. The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug -- the drug's social utility (this is basic economics).
No matter what the local basement-dwelling Rand-ite may tell you, economics is not a science and is not necessarily the best model for health care. Human welfare is not a widget that can (or should) be bought and sold like a car or an mp3 player.
3. Once the drug companies patents run out, anyone can produce generic medicines cheaply.
And how many millions of people will die in the meantime?
... just vehicles to ensure progress.
there is no such thing as a "natural right" an inventor has: patent law builds on the premise that a patent is a reward and that many people like to be rewarded.
you are confusing it with copyright law - which grants the author rights because it is his creation - no one else could habe written harry potter, for example. in contrast, sooner or later someone figures out how molecule XYZ can be synthesized - there usually is no "personal creativity" involved.
It was "we in academic medicine", not "we in corporate medicine". Academic research is not motivated by profits, or at least, it should not be.
Secondly, you can't really apply demand-supply analysis on life-saving drugs. When it is a matter of life and death (and there isn't any alternative product), the demand is infinite.
Thirdly, it is quite possible to provide economic (and other) incentives to researchers, even without patents.
You know, there's a reason why doctors take the hippocratic oath. Medical researchers should do well to remember those reasons.
Ignore this sig
Keep in mind that what is deemed an unacceptable drug in the developed world can be a huge benefit to developing nations. For example, lets say I have a very cheap drug that cures malaria in 80% of patients, but causes severe side effects in the remaining 20%. Clearly, this is unacceptable in the USA or other developed nations. However, in many countries in Africa, where millions of people die from malaria every year, this drug is perfect - its cheap, and it cures most of the patients. Regardless of the reletively high side effects, the benefit is enough that a drug like this would be considered a godsend by nearly all sub-saharan nations.
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
That is a gross oversimplyfication.
I know and understand that companies often act unethical and there is a need to protect people from unethical behaviour. But if the development of medicine could take place in developing countries, the prices could be much lower even if we keep the companies to the same moral standards we like to do in western society.
Many people protest against poor developing countries having to pay high prices for medicine. At the same time arguments like yours keep it that way. It's not a simple problem.
the pun is mightier than the sword
'Cause, if they do, I'd like to donate $10 to their research fund.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
A thousand bucks says this is never going to pass FDA testing in the United States... and we'll never find out why.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
So, here is proof that money and time was spent researching a useful medication for the good of sick people, regardless of cost of entry and return on investment (financially speaking, at least). So people really can create new ideas without the need to hoard them and profit greatly while excluding others.
Actually, copyright is specifically NOT a natural right in the US, although it is considered one in Europe. That was a major hangup in copyright treaties, until they agreed to disagree.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough released a statement today. It reads as follows:
"FUCK!"
Perhaps the answer to the problem of teenagers dropping bricks from motorway and railway bridges is to sue Tetris.
Looking at the Slashdot frontpage right now, among the stories I see are: "Researchers Work Around Hepatitis Drug Patent", "Wal-Mart Is Pushing Compact Fluorescent Bulbs", "Month of Apple Fixes", "MySQL Falcon Storage Engine Open Sourced", "Creating Prion-Free Cows". Maybe it's just my morning coffee making me optimistic, but it seems to me there's not usually this much positive news on Slashdot! Almost gives you hope for 2007, that does.
Basilisk Digital
I've undergone pegaylated interferon treatment twice now... didn't work for me, however did for my brother, and you have to have AWESOME insurance to cover this stuff. I doubt the side effects (which are 11 months of hell) are any different, but if it was cheaper, and for the people who relapse when the drug does keep the virus in check, but comes back, this would be great. After the treatment I felt so good for the couple of months that the viral levels were low... I've been hoping for a prophylactic kind of treatment for a long time... I really hope the pharmco's aren't assholes about something like this.
Some years back my landlord told me that his dad (who was near 100 years old and living in a nursing home) was on a special medicine that was kept under lock and key and that the he kept the key.
The pills were locked up at the nursing home but he took the only key to the cabinet home with him.
He had to drive up there each day, unlock the cabinet and administer a single pill to his dad under the supervision of the head nurse. Each pill was $1,000 and his dad had to take one every single day of his life or he would die. I don't remember the name of the medication or what it was for but damn, $1,000 per day to stay alive?!! That's insane! Of course it was being covered by insurance as mere mortals couldn't have afforded that much money, the old man had been a big shot at a refinery in his day and had retired with super great benefits and insurance.
I would bet money on it that the pills were really only worth about $10 each at best but the vampire profiteers were sucking the life blood out of every living thing within 2 miles of that nursing home and the old mans insurance company.
I can't imagine in my wildest dreams what you could ever put into one little capsule that would be worth $1,000. Even gold dust isn't worth that much money. Perhaps some diamonds??
One thing that PISSES me off is profiteering drug company vampires.
The greedy things they do should be outlawed.
Bingo. You got it in one. The same goes for a lot of other fields as well. Take for example Diabetes-B, which is a controllable disease, as long as you check your bloodsugarlevel 2 times a day, and either use insulin or dieting restriction to adjust for it.
However, to do these tests, you need testsstrips, which are not very cheap, and (surprise!) don't get covered by almost all medical insurances. What *does* get covered is the amputation required when your extremities start dying off. Something that could've been very easilly prevented by aforementioned checks.
The hospitals and the insurance companies make more 'profit' off of those amputations than off of patients that need a steady supply of not-so-cheap teststrips.
So yeah, you got it in once. Treating the symptoms is (for the corporate world) almost always better than curing the disease.
Splut.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
business model does not involve producing medicines to cure illness and disease. It is engaged in the research and development of drugs which will be used to treat acute conditions over a long period that produce vast profits. This is why there has been no development by any Pharmaceutical company of a new anti-bacterial agent. The American Military almost single-handedly worked on strategies to tackle the problem of malaria and the development of the antibiotic pencillin, was conceived as having a strategic advantage during WWII when the very first batch of it was used to treat soldiers with STD's and almost instantly restored them to full battle readiness. The Pharmaceutical industry has a long history of encouraging people to believe that they research cures - the truth is that they do not. A very large part of the industry produces belief-based products such as homeopathy. The barriers constructed through the patenting of medicines creates an artificial market where the cost/benefits and profits are found in the sole ownership of something really essential - such as sildenafil citrate. Compare this to the amount of effort that went into not mentioning the fact that in 1979 two Australian doctors, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall re-discovered(!) the cause and treatment of stomach ulcers was a) the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, and b) low cost generic anti-biotics.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Once upon a time there were no pharmacists, instead we had apothecaries and perhaps we were in many ways better off for it. Too often the stuff from the pharmaceuticals ends up bearing a strong resemblance to snake oil.
I went to a symposium at UCLA in November, put on by Athgo International (athgo.org). A large part of the conference was focused on IPR and it's relationship to global health problems. While Hep C might be a good thing to fight, it doesn't compare to the ATMs (aids, tuberculosis, malaria) and perhaps the worst is malaria. Because those suffereing from it (in the third world) don't have any money, big pharma doesn't even develop drugs to fight new strains. A million people a year die from malaria (largely in the southern hemisphere), and it is a completely treatable disease.
Then again, there are too many people on this planet. Hmm, maybe thats how the pharmacuetical big-wigs justify it...
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
Man, am I sick of this pseudo-scientific drivel. Economy. What you earn is a measure of how useful you are to society. Yadda, yadda.
Folks, start to realize that this way of reasoning is just an instrument to make the rich ever richer (personally, no problem with that) and the poor poorer and poorer (and with that I do have a problem.)
Sheesh.
I made my above comment before reading FinalMidnight's comment and having read his comment it occurred to me that my comment might be misread as an insult to all pharmacists instead of some existing corporate structure ( and laws and threats of lawsuits ) that turns many pharmacists into simply licensed order fillers. The closest thing today in the US that comes close to the old apothecary would be what I believe is called a compound pharmacist and is somewhat rare. The true object of my above comment was to indicate that even if large pharmaceuticals were not around a doctor could still send his prescription to the apothecary to be filled as long as they had the required ingredients to make it. Pharmaceuticals essentially put the apothecaries out of business by making sure that doctors prescribed as little as possible of what was in the public domain and manufacturing any such item so cheaply as to make it impractical for the apothecary to do so. However they charged like heck for the patent medicine they heavily influenced doctors to prescribe.
Interestingly enough, from what I have read doctors sometimes even discussed with apothecaries/pharmacists in the past what to prescribe their patients. Which reminds me of a boyhood memory. My mother having always been a bit of an annoying penmanship freak once said something to our doctor about the way he wrote his presciptions out. The doctor replied that it wasn't meant to be readable, it was just to let the pharmacist know he wanted something and the pharmacist would call when he got it and find out what. The pharmacist did use the phone before filling the order and mother never accosted another doctor on his poor penmanship.
Great argument here - just mention that probably some people will die due to patents and describe the situation with drug patents. Nice one.
See? Patents do encourage innovation!...by forcing others to work around existing patents. :-P
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Here are the Financial Highlights from the annual reports of Novartis, Pfizer and AstraZeneca. They all spend around 15% of their revenues on research. The number is typical for the industry. The other 85% go to other things, according to their own figures. More than half their revenues are spent on marketing and profits.
So the standard argument for granting patent monopolies and allowing the pharma companies to charge whatever they want for the patented drugs - that they spend the excess revenues on research for new drugs - is simply not true.
The organization Doctors Without Borders gives an example of how pharmaceutical patents affect prices i a recent press release:
In this particular case, the price with patents was a hundred times the price without patents. How can 15% spent on R&D justify a markup by 10,000% on the final product?To the western world, pharmaceutical patents mean an enormous waste of money. In the third world, it's lives that are wasted instead. It's time to think about an alternative.
And alternatives exist - plenty of them, in fact. Nobel prize winner Joseph E Stiglitz has made one proposal. The Swedish Pirate Party has made another (or essentially the same, actually). Economist Dean Baker has collected four others, that also run along the same lines.
It's time to open up a global discussion about the effects of pharmaceutical patents, and the alternatives. Today's system is not only grossly immoral, it is also expensive and wasteful. It's time for a better way. Pharmaceutical patents kill.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
If it wasn't for patents, what would drive people to look for alternate treatments ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Patents are simply recognizing the inventor's right to say, "I'll show you how to do X if you promise to do Y."
Unlike physical property, the Constitution does not recognize the existence of intellectual property or any other intrinsic rights to ideas or inventions.
Therefore, patents create that right, they don't recognize it. And they create that right only temporarily, only for a very limited set of ideas, and only if the inventor actually lives up to specific requirements.
In contrast to physical property, the only generally recognized ethical obligation people have with respect to ideas is that they have to attribute them correctly.
People should keep in mind that a large part of the development of drugs is already financed by tax dollars. Yes: your tax dollars go towards drugs that drug companies then get a monopoly on in order to sell. It wasn't always so; I believe the law on that changed in 1980.
As I recall, Krugman did the calculation and computed how much tax dollars subsidize the development of patented drugs and how much tax payers end up paying for purchasing the resulting proprietary drugs, and he came to the conclusion that we'd be far better off if we simply abolished drug patents altogether and just paid for the entire drug development out of public funds.
An additional problem with the current patent-incentivized drug development system is that it meets aggregate market needs, not actual health needs. Concretely, it is more profitable for drug companies to develop endless variations on cold medicines that don't contribute significantly to health, and to develop drugs for treating the symptoms of diseases without healing the underlying diseases, than it is to develop drugs that quickly and effectively treat serious disease.
I love free markets, but for health care, they simply aren't working in their current form. If we want a free market-based health care system, we need to structure the health care market very differently, and that also includes massive changes to, or abolition of, drug patents.
It is funny you mentioned GlaxoSmithKline since the Rector of Imperial ( Sir Richard Sykes ) is the guy who facilitated the merger between Glaxo and Smith Kline. I would be very curious to find out what is his attitude against this research which apparently is not good news ( PR wise, I suppose ) for GlaxoSmithKline ( among others ).
It appears in many studies that R&D costs and clinical studies are the main drivers of cost:c le/2006/12/19/AR2006121901510.html
d f
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
A comprehensive look (and really interesting read) is here:
http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.p
Where it goes into great detail about drug development costs.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
At the risk of being modded redundant to myself, people should look at this link before drawing conclusions about the development costs of drugs.
d f
http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.p
And I think that you're being modded a troll is complete incorrect. Moderators, just because you don't agree with someone doesn't make them a troll.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
no one else could have written harry potter
Actually, I think most of us could have written that.
Magic, wizards, weird names and children: the recipe for every fantasy children's story in the last 50 years.
This is why Bill Gates' largesse with respect to fighting disease should be taken with a grain of salt. Because the research he supports is protected by the IP regime, the actual cost of delivered drugs may be significantly higher than they otherwise might. It's very analogous to the way Microsoft values their software contributions to schools and other charitable causes. Instead of considering the actual cost of manufacturing and distribution, they include a giant markup to cover their "intellectual property". Software is worse, because you don't even get title to actual software, but only a license.
... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
Much of Bill's money is going toward research. That's great. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the cost of supporting the IP regime. There would be far more medicine available to assist the disadvantaged if there were actual competition in the marketplace.
I don't consider Bill a hopeless case. He understands full well the burden IP protections place on the marketplace. Bill could transform himself from an unequivocal business titan to a truly transformative historical figure if he would use his clout to press for real change in patent and copyright law. By doing so, he could do far more to make the world a better place than by simply contribributing a few meager billions of dollars. Money is just money. Ideas last forever.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.
--Bill Gates
I'm glad to see you decided to respect my patent on the tag. If you are interested in using this tag in the future, contact me for licensing rights.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10873-cheap- drug-dodges-big-pharma-patents.html
If you have a science article, why not link a science outlet? General news media generally get science wrong, and non-science reporters rarely understand the subject.
BBC is fine for stories about serial killers, unless the serial killer is a disease.
-sm62704
I certainly could have written Ulysses. It's only a story about some bloke pissing around Dublin.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Actually, omeprazole alone WILL cure ulcers. Most ulcers would even heal on their own.
The reason antibiotics are often given is the association between Helicobacter infection and ulcers. Eradication of this bacteria improves healing but most importantly it reduces your risk of getting ulcers again it the future. But (depending on your population, of course) the prevalence of H. pylori is actually decreasing and more and more ulcers seen today are H. pylori negative (in the two years I worked at a GE clinic, I would say that only a minority of ulcers were H.p. positive). Aspirin and other NSAIDs are very good ulcer-causing drugs that are nowadays consumed in enourmous quantities by ever increasing population of patients. No need to give antibiotics to there ulcers.
So to repeat myself - omeprazole alone can help ulcers heal, if there is H. pylori, antibiotics are given as well.
The argument should, I think, be more around Pharma having incentives to allow licenced cheap production of patentable drugs locally...
...they'd sell less. Make less profit. They don't spend money on advertising just for fun...Big pharma lives and dies by it's megabrands and these appear to need to be advertised in the US. I'm much more comfortable with *no* advertising of prescription medication, but I guess that's an issue to address the US TV networks with, rather than the companies that avail themselves of their advertising...
You managed to slip in an ad hominem attack on anyone who dares disagree with you, before they can even respond. Nice way to encourage rational dialog. Or maybe you're so self centered you believe anyone who ever disagrees with you is defective.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Scherling Corp appears to hold the key patent impacted by this one. Work arounds aren't about destroying the value of the patent system, many companies employ work-around techniques to mitigate the value of a potential license and drug companies, or any company, need to account for their pricing with the potential ramifications of activities like this.
www.patentmonkey.com
or hers
Sorry . . . but you did put it in bold.
only one everything
There is a difference between the technical ability to write something and the fact that such a book is almost by definition unique. If you try to write it without having ever seen or head of Harry Potter before you would not create Harry Potter. Even knowing the basic idea you'd simply create something similar at best.
Find us an example of another economic system that actually produces drugs like those we're discussing. Since you're so damn smart, that should be really easy, right?
Except the multiple examples your supreme intelligence simply must be able to produce can't depend on the current model in any way - no "working around" the patented results of the current drug industry.
So come on, bright boy, show us the alternative systems that actually produce cancer-fighting drugs. Show us these other ways of producing drugs that keep HIV-positive people alive and healthy for decades.
What? You can't show us alternative systems for developing complex, intricate drugs that have actually been shown to work?
Why not?
So whose viewpoint is not rational but religious? Because it's based on wishful thinking and faith and not on demonstrated reality? Who has swallowed propaganda hook, line, and sinker because of a desire to wreck a functional if expensive system that actually does save untold millions of lives in favor of some unproven drug development model that happens to work for commodity software?
You're willing to risk indirectly killing millions of people just validate your economic and social viewpoints.
You're a ghoul. A fucking idiotic ghoul.
The new "workaround" to bind Interferon with Sugar, is to use an aqeuous solution, with a neutral PH balance, and apply torroidal disturbances to the solution matrix. They have essentiall patented stirring -- and the charity part is just a sneaky way to get everyone on their side, until they start charging licensing fees for your morning cup of coffee!
I'm going to plunk my last $750 in the bank down right now, on patenting a method for using a temperature elevated aqeuous solution, to bind disparate subtances in a solution with torroidal disturbances. If nothing else, I'm going to make sure my morning cup of coffee is firmly Copy-Left.
Then, from the procedes, I'll add the "temperature elevation" through microwave excitation of molecules -- sure the Microwave has already been patented -- but nobody thought to "bundle up" the full procedure. We are talking about a full "PROCESS" here people! I'll just have to deliver 10,000 pages of prior art -- no biggy.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Creative thinking, observing things from a unique perspective and hard work is what leads scientist to these discoveries. Saying that these discoveries are simply a matter of putting a few more bricks on an existing wall and that someone else eventually would have done this anyway is an insult to the discoveries of the scientific community.
Harry Potter built on a wealth of previously existing literature about wizards and magic, but that doesn't cheapen it in anyway...
Just because you don't see the artistic, creative beauty of science doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Things that are systematic and functional can also be artistic.
If you must!
>$14000 a year? Who really can pony that up? I am living in the US and I make a very good living compared to a lot of other people in my area, especially in the world and if I wouldn't have any health insurance, I doubt I could really get that up for myself, let alone if I had a family.
$14k a year is for a lot of Americans over 1/4 of their yearly income before taxes. Imagine living in a poor country where your total income IS $14k or lower, those people can never get their hands on such products.
Roche and other big pharmaceutical companies (Bayer, Janssen) have made health and health insurance a trillion dollar industry and apparently have no regret that they are killing people, not only in third world countries but I can imagine that a lot of people in the US and Europe can't get the medicine they need because of them.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
IANAPharmacologist, but even I know that COX-2 inhibitors are bad news. See sibling.
:(){
Drug companies are just that.. companies, businesses, profit makers! Are you trying to tell them to not make money but invest money in research, ads, etc and just give their products away?
What many people are stuggling with here is not what a drug company should or should not do but that they want social welfare where the government pays for the research of the drugs then it can freely be given away.
I am sry but there is no way to look at this problem and blame the drug companies. They are just doing what any other business does, make money.
If you want to discuss the probem, talk about the expense of using capitolism in drug research/production. Would we get as many ground breaking medicines if we relied on a non profit agency to produce them or does having competition produce more.
Pfizer is hardly a representative sample of the average drug company at an average time in recent history. They are probably the most successful drug companies right now because they have a few highly successful blockbuster drugs still on patent. This picture is likely to change for the worse over the next several years as their patents expire and the current pipeline is apt relatively dry.
And this is a meaningless statistic in a heavily R&D driven business. All this means is that their COGS sold, i.e., the to actually manufacture the pills themselves, is about 35% on average. It says nothing of the cost of R&D, licensing, legal/lawsuits, management overhead, and, gasp, even sales (which are important to ANY business).
The 42 billion dollar you cite is "gross profit" which ignores various important operating expenses like: R&D, SG&A/overhead, one time charges, and other important expenses. After these expenses are taken into account the "profit" is roughly 11 billion dollars. Furthermore, it also ignores interest ($471M) and taxes ($3.5B). The actual net income available to shareholders was roughly 8 billion dollars (about 80% less than what you suggest) and this is the most relevant number if you wish to discuss the attractiveness of the businesses and its cost structure. Numbers for the lazy.
Now you might argue that 42B over COGS is only possible in large part because of patents, but then you'd also have to acknowledge that without that 42B dollars a lot of other essential activities like R&D, IT, Legal, mgmt, etc would not be covered. In other words, even if we assume that the shareholders need no profits, and strip them of their 8B dollars, the notion that there are huge savings to be had over the long term by eviscerating the drug companies is not borne out by the numbers.
Wrong. Toyota owns more than ten thousand patents.. What's more, each non-Toyota component in the car typically claims at least several patents, even if not owned by Toyota those patents still spur innovation.
By the way, Redhat (RHT) has profit margin of 18%.
Let's evaluate, shall we? Ask yourself, why would a company possibly eat into their profits to spend even $1 on advertising? Could it be because they expect >$1 return?
The money spent on advertising generates more money for research. Not less. You would be just as absurd complaining about how St. Jude's Hospital spends so much money advertising for donations. Their expenditures result in more money to help sick kids get better, and the situation is exactly comparable.
You may besides consider that in as much as we are discussing monopolistic patents, these companies are generally not advertising to compete against other products, but rather to perform the service of informing people about the existence of their product, i.e., people who would otherwise not receive treatment due to ignorance of its availabilty.
On top of that, the increased scale of marketing decreases the optimal sale price.
No matter what the local basement-dwelling Rand-ite may tell you, economics is not a science and is not necessarily the best model for health care. Human welfare is not a widget that can (or should) be bought and sold like a car or an mp3 player.
economics
-noun
1. (used with a singular verb) the science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, or the material welfare of humankind.
No one's telling you to like the conclusions of economics, but saying it is not a science is astoundingly ignorant. What else do you call a mathematical theory of behavior that is firmly grounded in real-world confirmation?
Your assertions about the value of human welfare may be right; but quite honestly, they are not relevant to the discussion. I for one would tender that a human life is infinitely valuable. Would I therefore justify sacrificing the entire U.S. GDP to save one person? Would I do something like outlaw peanut butter in order to rescue those persons who may otherwise die from peanut allergies? How about outlawing cars?
The moral value of a person against other physical things is simply not a realistic metric for political decisions. You must instead base your analysis on the apparent worth of health, longevity, etc.. A free market provides the best system for this. A human life may be of infinite value, but this is not how people behave (or else--why the continued market for cigarettes?) and in governmance we must defer to the latter, not the former.
And how many millions of people will die in the meantime?
Quite a few, but also rather a lot less than if we decided that making ineffective moral gestures was more important.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
It is also worth keeping in mind that patents and copyrights have important diferences. A strong copyrights has little chance of colliding with the rights of others to create independently whereas a strong patent necessarily demand significant breadth and these create a significant chance of interfering with independent invention (or at least creates the opportunity for someone to make a credible claim). I support strong patent rights, but I can accept a more nuanced view of these than I can copyrights.
Furthermore, you seem to be under the false impression that any dollar spent on promotion is a dollar wasted or that any good drug will sell itself. However, the facts do not support your opinion. Many good drugs have been under-prescribed for a long time despite the drug companies' promotional efforts and guidance from leading experts, the CDC, etc.
For instance, it is widely known by cardiovascular experts today that statins have been way under-prescribed. There have been numerous studies that have shown that roughly 1/3 of heart attacks would be prevented if statins were prescribed to high-risk patients alone. This despite the fact that statins were introduced well over 18 years ago for precisely this purpose. The number of high risk patients on statins was just 9% in 1992 (several years after their introduction) and just 19% in 2002. Even after a year after additional studies were performed (e.g., "Adult Treatment Panel III") just 50% of said patients were on the statins. Read it. Virtually every industry advertises especially those with something new to sell and those with very high fixed costs and relatively low marginal costs.
Besides just the issue of under-prescription you should also consider that profit margins are not fixed. If they spent nothing on promotion it is very likely that their sales would suffer terribly. Assuming R&D and other non-promotional overhead is held constant their margins would quickly be reduced into negative territory, which would force them to raise prices or cut back on R&D to make it a viable business (or raise more capital, which would be impossible). The odds are very high that most classes of drugs would cease be economically viable since the few patients that are prescribed a particular new drug in some dire circumstance would not be able to afford the vastly higher prices.
These thoughts are fine and good, but this doesn't change the fact that drugs are produced largely by private US corporations (and a handful of Euro firms...which are increasingly coming to the US) and that they need to cover their primary costs (R&D) and they even, gasp, need to make a profit to ensure continued investment. Until such time that our government, hell ANY government, proves itself capable of developing its own medicines with any reliability, let alone doing them nearly as cost-effectively, I would not want government to meddle with the drug industry model (except, perhaps, in the most extreme of circumstances, like AIDS drugs in the 3rd World).
A pill that would keep me alive when I would otherwise die would be worth a lot more to me than every diamond on the planet.
"(There is something to be said about business cycles actually strengthening the economy by threatening to cull the herd, but I don't see corporations being that altruistic...)"
Cull the herd?
I know, you were being metaphorical. You meant culling corporations. But one of the things we're discussing here is people needing life-saving or life-extending drugs who are unable to afford them. You can imagine what happens if they don't get the drugs.
I do like your economics. I just found your choice of phrase there somewhat chilling.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
I give these researchers 3 cheers, and hope their work will contribute to the greater good. If only the entire healthcare field was so centered.....
No words of wisedom here.
As a researcher who works with PEGylated proteins, I can tell you this article makes no sense at all. PEG stands for poly(ethylene glycol). PEG is a hydrophillic synthetic polymer. It has nothing to do with "sugar". Some proteins do have "sugars" attached to them, this is called glycosylation, but it is something totally different. Basically, people will be dumber for having read this article. I would expect more from the BBC.
From Bandolier:
"A great deal of thinking will need to be done. There will be, and have been, suggestions that all these drugs, including over the counter analgesics, should be withdrawn. But in both these large studies half the patients were present or former users of NSAIDs or coxibs. Alternatives are few, with problems of their own."
Consider that the "alternatives" are acetaminophen (liver damage with high doses) and Flintstones chewable morphine...
I haven't seen that in Canada... were the twice a day Amoxi-Clav 875s not big enough? :-D
test
Thank you.
So, you think pharmaceuticals would work out much better if they came from the government, but not from the current American government. That's not good. We can vote out bad governments, but we clearly also vote them in. The administration that is pure enough, and free enough from corporate influence, to allow only government-controlled drugs to be made will have to include safeguards against the next government that is as corporate-friendly as the one we've had in place for the past four years. Even then, there is no way to stop that admin from allowing the corps. to work alongside the government in drug-making.
There are incentives other than the profit incentive that rush drugs. The reason so many drugs get approved too quickly today was, back in the early '90s, an AIDS drug was under the approval process, but because the process was longer then, somewhere between thousands and millions of people would die while it was being tested. Humanitarians everywhere protested the time lag, and so the fast-track process was born. If there were no corporations involved, the government wouldn't fast-track as many drugs as they do now, but they would still fast-track the ones seen as most desperately needed. If COX-2 inhibitors fall into that class (rheumatoid arthritis isn't deadly, but it is painful and debilitating), then the Vioxx problem could happen again--and I'm not yet convinced that there'd be any other COX-2 inhibitors ready to replace it under your system.
Yes, the gov. could research drugs that the corps. wouldn't, and that could be beneficial. But it can't research them and all the drugs that all the corps. do research: that would take billions of dollars, and the kind of gov. that would start this sort of program is not the kind of gov. that would just shove it all onto the national debt. The funds can't come from selling the drugs, which are all at cost of manufacture or less; therefore, they must come from taxes of some sort. You know how even a noble American feels about taxes when he is aware of paying them.
Competing drugs in the same class from corporations is, well, competition. From the government, copmpeting drugs in the same class might look like pork. The public can demand research, but it can also demand the end of research. This is part of your plan, of course; that's why you have transparency. But you ask that the public be educated enough to know which lines of research should be followed, or that it listen to the researchers when the decision whether to continue is made. We can guarantee neither in a democracy.
So this might not solve the benzodiazepate/SSRI problem. In our world, Valium and its kin had been around and apparently working fine for a good forty-five years before Prozac was discovered. In that time, there was nearly twenty-five years between when it was decided that Wellbutrin wasn't that good a replacement for Valium-type drugs and when the next non-Valium-type drug that was effective in that area was released--and buspirone isn't quite as effective; it's just safer. Prozac came approx. five years later...
Anyhow, if Valium and its kin work well enough for forty-five years, why invent Prozac? Why even have more than one drug in the Valium class out at a time--which would kill Haldol (to the relief of some), but might also keep Xanax off the market (for better or worse)? Drug research would be funded as much as Congress wants, but how can the public tell legit research from pork?
If you think that Valium & Prozac are lifestyle drugs that never needed to be invented, try to imagine this argument in some more critical field. Say, anti-seizure drugs.
Your idea is noble. I am just cynical and afraid of unintended consequences.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
The research costs for Twinkies were sunk decades ago; the basic formula hasn't changed since 1930 or so. Last I checked, brand-name Twinkies were $1.00 for two, or $3.50 or so for a dozen. They cost less than that when they came out, but money was worth more then. Of course, generic "Twinkies" do cost $0.50 for two...
The research costs for the sorts of cookies that sell for $3.50 a bag were sunk some time ago: 100 years for Oreos perhaps, approx. 75 for chocolate chip and chocolate chunk, centuries for most other classic varieties. More recently researched cookies sometimes cost $3.50 a cookie, or $3.50 for six cookies, or $7.00 a tub. Prices on older cookies held mostly steady through inflation. And cookies don't require that much skill to make: most people can follow a cookie recipe. Even more can make cookies from a box mix (also approx $3.50 for "a bag" of results, not counting oil & eggs).
The research costs for coffee were sunk 1000 years ago, and it didn't require that much research to discover it. I'll presume that it cost far more, relatively, back then than it does now. Recently researched coffees have been known to cost $3.50 for 12 oz. or $6.00 for 6 oz. or $14.00 for 2 oz. Even coffee at $2.99 a pound often uses 13-oz. pounds nowadays.
I'm not saying that the price of that heart drug is reasonable. I'm not saying that that corp. isn't gouging you and your grandma; $100.00 a day is likely typical for new medicine, regardless of how essential it is for the patient, but that doesn't make it easier to take or pay. But still, if discovering that drug required as much R&D as Twinkies did, and if the drug is as hard to process for market as coffee is, then it's logical that it costs more than Twinkies or coffee. That patent will expire someday; someday the price will go down.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Okay. We might not need as many drugs as we do now. But how can we be sure which actual drugs we'll want before we find them?
If synthetic drugs will be replaced with naturally occurring compounds, and since in your plan the government will be in charge of everything anyway, the natural compounds must be tested as thoroughly as the synthetic drugs. Some natural drugs are safe and work. Some don't work, however, and a few aren't safe. Your system should treat ephedra exactly like ephedrine: both are okay, or neither are.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Thanks for the post! I like your analysis: even those who disagree with your conclusions should find your analysis useful. /. prefer 14+14 with renewal, and given that software is copyrighted you have a point. If copyright is optional, either 14+14 or 28+28 can be made to work. I think 14 alone is too short for the genius works.
I believe that patents and copyrights should both exist, neither conflated nor annihilated.
I believe that patents and copyrights should fall under different standards. Patents should be handled under the utilitarian model: most inventions are more perspiration than inspiration. Either 17 or 20 years is decent. Since these patents cover drugs, we'd best make it 17. Software patents are banned--copyright is enough for software.
The sorts of work that copyrights cover include a lot of utilitarian work, but also a lot of genius work. Copyright law should cover both kinds, and it actually used to cover both kinds. So, I hereby propose that we return to the system used before the Sonny Bono Copyright Act: registration and notice of copyright required, 28+28 terms, explicit renewal required for the second 28. There would be less need for copylefts in this system, and works will get covered according to how the people who make them value them--but within limits. No work would be covered for more than one average lifetime.
I know most on
"Life" must never be part of a copyright term, because life is unpredictable. "Life+" guarantees that a work is covered too long; "life" alone encourages assasination of artists.
I do not want "copyright=14 years+revenue" for similar reasons: that too is indeterminate, and it'll lock out of the public domain the works that would most benefit the public domain. If "14+revenue" became law, the film industry would suddenly become profitable, and there will be 15th anniv. editions of every new film made...
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Well, at least there is more than one drug company. I imagine that the number of drugs we get now is greater than the number we would get from direct government development by the number of companies competing with each other for prescriptions. The sit. could be better--there have been quite a few mergers in Big Pharma, and there is too much advertising. Prescription drug ads no more belong on TV and radio than cigarette ads do. But it could be worse...
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney