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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."
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.)
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.
Can we all wake up from your holier than thou utopian ideals now?
Profit is incredibly important. Without it so much simply will not get done. There simply aren't enough altruistic beings on this planet to run an economy on charity alone. From the pool of brilliant scientists and doctors you have maybe 20% who do it just because they like helping others. That leaves the other 80% who are in it for the money. So you want to remove the motivations for 80% of our scientific grey matter? What sense does that make?
Over time the costs of drugs comes down as generics are made available. Either those countries can wait for that to happen or they can steal them now and pay us back later after our armies show up on their doorstep to collect the payment due.
Either way works pretty well.
As for the inventor, how do you know that they did not go to private school? That they did not buy their own materials? And who gets free food for life? Its quite possible that the inventor's family paid for all of those things in which case he'd owe society BUPKISS, NADA, GOOSE EGG in return.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.