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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.
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.
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.
Your comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the way things work in a capitalist society. Even with this drug, the researchers will have to convince some drug company to manufacture and distribute this drug. How will they do it? By convincing the manufacturer that they will be able to make a profit off of it. Here's the crux of the issue -- you state, As the above example shows, you don't need extra profit to develop a new drug. That's true. But in rare circumstances. The key is when you say "a" new drug. Not many new drugs. Why hasn't this method been used for lots of other patented drugs? Most likely b/c it's impracticable on a large scale.
You're unlikely to replicate the research large drug companies do in academia. Somebody has to pay for the research. The money has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is usually from profits from drugs. And as I said earlier, profits are an indication of social utility -- how much people value the drug. The more profits, the more people value the drug. The larger the profit, the more good the drug does, and the more incentive to produce that drug (which is why capitalism is pretty cool). While you are denying people the drug now, it will be available to them in the future. With most patented medicines, the drug wouldn't have been developed in the first place if the drug companies didn't think they could have turned a profit. As I said, it's better to have the drug available in 14 years or so (or however long patents expire) than not have the drug available at all.
And admittedly, I haven't read the article. However, the summary mentions that the researchers are mimicking the actions of a patented drug. How do you think it was found out that this particular action helped in the first place? I'd be willing to bet my $.02 that it came from commercial drug companies hoping to make a profit.
Bottom line: Drug companies have to make a profit. They have to recover costs (and R&D costs are huge, as are clinical trials, and a lot of money gets spent researching drugs that will never make it to market). Patents ensure this and also incentivize drug companies to develop the most useful medicines.
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.
"(the more profit, the more useful it is)" So a treatment for cancer taken three times daily for the rest of your life is more useful than a cure for cancer? I'll keep that in mind.
'Cause, if they do, I'd like to donate $10 to their research fund.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Wow! I'm gobsmacked at your sheer, unabashed ignorance of "The way things work".
To the first: what do you think the ratio of new drug research is to profits? For a major drug company? Conversely, what do you think the ratio of marketing vs profits? Got a clue? No? Feel free to go do a little googling. It is an open secret that drug companies spend almost nothing (compared) on research into new drugs. Even then the research directed is in very, very specific (eg profitable) areas. Hint! It makes a lot more money to market a drug for "Erectile Disfunction" than to actually make a simple, cheap cure for just about any disease you care to name.
To address your second point: The profits made from a drug are a reflection of the profitability of that drug. Nothing more or less. Concrete examples of how _value_ and _profit_ are distinct concepts to follow.
To the third: Once patents run out, drug companies market new, patented drugs. Older, generic drugs are not marketed. Part of the reason this happens is that drug companies advertise directly to doctors (who write the perceptions) and part of the reason is that drug stores make more money selling drugs that cost more. There are a bunch of simple ways to fix most of this in legislation. That, however, is another can of worms.
Examples of point two and the relationship with point three:
Ritalin: Heard of it? Great! How about Dexamphetamine? Not so much? Little known fact! Dexampetamine is a more effective treatment for ADD and ADHD than Ritalin. However it is perscribed less than a fifth as much. Why? Because the patents on Dexamphetamine ran out years ago. It can be made by any drug company and is a commodity item. Profits are very, very low. Ritalin is very profitable because it is a treatment. A patient will need to continue to take Rtalin for years. Possibly forever. Profitability: High! Value: Fuck All! Ritalin does a worse job than a drug that costs less than a third of the price.
Treatment of stomach ulcers: A method of curing stomach ulcers has been around for more than ten years. Thats right, A complete cure! The Australian who discovered the cure was under attack from many major drug companies, who attempted to discredit him and his research. Why? Because anti-acid treatments of stomach ucers are a) Patented and b) something that needs to be taken _forever_. The cure relys on a simple, generic anti-biotic and some mineral treatments. Not patentable, therefore no profits.
If you give a shit about any of these issues, you might be interested in the process of testing and approval that goes on in the USA compared to other countries (Like the UK or Canada) and what the differences mean. You might also be interested in the "Evergreening" of medical patents and the blatant kickbacks that medical companies give Doctors and Pharmacists.
And YES, I am a fucking Pharmacist.
In the maelstrom of the chaos at the center of my mind, I taste the salt of sadness as I feel my soul unwind.
Sorry for the flamebait, but you're a moron. Here's why:
/.?
1. The software development industry is very different from the drug industry. In particular, look at the costs of bringing something to market. It costs far more to bring a patented drug to market than it does a computer program. So you have higher costs you have to recover.
2. Where does a lot of support for Linux come from? Companies like Red Hat and IBM, who are also competing and want to turn a profit. However, IBM and Red Hat can support different niches of the market without competing directly. This is harder to do with prescription drugs.
3. In effect, cooperation and competition are competing models. Cooperation appears to be working well in software (I'm currently using Firefox on Gentoo), but that model has failed to gain serious traction in the drug industry. If cooperation like this is so great, why hasn't it flourished more? Why aren't we seeing more stories of people cooperating like this working on new drugs?
Sigh, why do I try to promote standard, mainstream economics on
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.
False. Research can be done under the auspices of a non-profit organization or university, as was done in this case.
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).
Clearly false. An effective, cheap vaccine against HIV, say, would be far more valuable than all the Viagra in the world.
3. Once the drug companies patents run out, anyone can produce generic medicines cheaply.
Yes, after denying the public access for 20 years. Ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath? See: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=214714&cid=17
Funnily enough, you misinterpreted Professor Shaunak's quote. Here's some context from the BBC article:
After all, I am strangely colored.
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
You're unlikely to replicate the research large drug companies do in academia.
The good folk at The Wellcome Trust might disagree with you there.
And unlike purely commercial entities, and while they do commercialise some of their efforts, they aren't trying to extract as much profit as possible like Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca are.
Bottom line: Drug companies have to make a profit. They have to recover costs
Drug companies DO have to make a profit, but to say that this is to recoup their R&D costs is a little naive. These companies must return a substantial profit for their shareholders. R&D is simply a means to an end, and that end is shareholder value.
Non-profit entities (as nicely detailed in TFA) are quite able to make great advances in medical science without the requirement for profit.
Pharmaceutical companies could then strive to manufacture these "open" drugs in as an efficient way as possible, in an effort to compete with other manufacturers. This competitiveness would give us, the public cheap, quality drugs, and allow the manufacturing companies to make a profit.
This is capitalism as it should be. This is medicine as it should be.
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.
Claiming "medical patents spur innovation" isn't the same as claiming that "there would be no research at all without medical patents".
You have perfectly summed up why drug companies spend most of their time (and budgets) on fleecing rich people instead of curing poor people.
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.
Reduced profits is not "no profits" and the incentive of having to compete would in fact be a much greater push to produce new drugs once the artificial protection period of the patent was removed.
Your argument makes the incorrect assumption that drug companies want to cure disease. They do not; quite the reverse, in fact. They can't make money off healthy people.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
"Large profits give drug companies an incentive to develop the most useful medicines"
No. A monopoly give drug companies a large incentive for marketing. And fails to give drug companies appropriate market incentive for efficiency. 80% of pharma revenue is spent on marketing, administration and inefficient production. The R&D is just a necessary evil to obtail the particular monopoly necessary; witness the classic twist-a-molecule game to gain another 20 years monopoly with minimum investment and minimum improvement over current drugs (coincidentally, the particular game that is turned against the pharmaceuticals in this case).
"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 equivalent?"
How about this alternative: having _five times_ the current amount of medical R&D and no pharma marketing at no increase in cost, or the same R&D but at a fifth of the cost and no pharma marketing?
Monopolies are a crap way to create any way or form of efficiency. The IP sector is no different from any other sector; protect companies from competition and you get bloated inefficient organizations capable of wasting unlimited amounts of funding and revenue.
Of course you'll see those bloated corporations claiming the monopoly is necessary; for their current level of inefficiency it _is_ necessary. However, that inefficiency itself isnt necessary, and a free market situation would force them to correct it, while leaving us free to more appropriately steer money into R&D.
Could you clarify that about treatment for stomach ulcers? I thought that omeprazole was already off patent (we have 11 brands available here in the Czech Republic). The cost of treatment for omeprazole is about $0.33 to $1 a day here. It is usually given for 6 weeks, so the total cost is something up to $40. And it actually compeletely cures the ulcers! Wow! Amazing.
:)
I suggest you go back freshen up a little before you come preaching here.
And YES, I am a fucking doctor and no I don't have any shares of pharma companies.
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.
I have little sympathy for big pharma but sometimes the high price can be justified. When Taxol was determined to be a promising cancer treatment it's only source was from harvesting the bark of the pacific yew tree. As Taxol was only present in minute quantities in the bark, you needed to sacrifice hundreds of trees to obtain enough Taxol for a single treatment, thus Taxol was extremely expensive. They have since come up with methods of synthesising taxol from precursors in the needles which has allowed them to avoid sacrificing the tree and thus increase production, but it will remain a very expensive drug until they find a reliable means of synthesising it from a more common/inexpensive source.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Are you sure it was really $1000? That's $365,000 a year. The most expensive currently marketed drug is Cerezyme at $175,000 a year, and that's for some weird genetic disorder that only, like 5000 people on the planet suffer from.
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
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.
If it wasn't for patents, what would drive people to look for alternate treatments ?
... maybe the idea that there are possibly better treatments that could be discovered? Ones with less side effects, that work faster, that work for people that the known treatments don't, or perhaps even ones that have a lower production/materials cost?
I dunno
I agree, this would require some specifics to be believable. However, it does get to a truth: drugs can be very very expensive. There are multiple reasons, some of them not obvious. First and foremost, disease populations (ie the drug's customer base) are being split by the more accurate subclassification genomics is affording medicine. This means that a cure for any newly more specific disease is for fewer and fewer people. When you take the higher and higher costs of developement and testing, add in the overhead produced by failed research efforts (the majority), and less time left on the patent (because it takes so long to get it to approval) you have to run the price up even further. There are no brakes on this whole process because right now, even with HMO's, we still pay whatever it takes.
You're really a fucking pharmacist? You don't seem to actually have much concept of the way things work.
Stomach ulcers have a cure. In some people. Those with helicobacter. And it's not just an antibiotic - it's three drugs (amoxicillin, metronidazole, and a PPI of your choice - let's say omeprazole. You mention a mineral (presume you mean bismuth?). There are a few different treatment regimens available, some with differences. I believe you can even get them as one pill with all the drugs in. Usually a week's course.
However, that doesn't address:
1. people who don't respond to this first treatment, or the second line treatment, or anything.
2. people who have non-infectious ulcers
3. people who have 'acid indigestion' - a myriad of diagnoses from oesophagitis, reflux, candida, and gastritis to functional dyspepsia (also called 'we don't have a diagnosis, but we've ruled all the treatable ones out, so w'll just treat your symptoms').
And the drug companies love it because they can market 'new' drugs from old, cheap generics (i.e. package them as one treatment, put it in a fancy box - they're not going to make much money off those same drugs otherwise).
Now, dexamphetamine is still a very popular drug for ADHD. I won't even go into how marketing directly to the parents causes overprescription as they demand that as it had the best glossy ad in their lifestyle magazine. Or how the condition is totally overdiagnosed by a society that is forgetting how to look after its kids (try it a hundred years ago, with no TV to babysit them while they eat their preservative laden dinner, before 4 hours of playstation then bed at 2am).
(PS to the indignant parents of ADHD kids - your little precious may or may not be 'real' ADHD. That's not my point. The sad fact is it's becoming a diagnosis of convenience for shit parents).
Anyway - I digress. There are a number of other holes in your statements (some of which have already been addressed by another physician) but in future, try to at least have a bit of knowledge about what you are talking about. I certainly don't believe you are a pharmacist, unless you trained a long time ago and never kept current.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
You are counting people as equals. You equate amount of money invested with people that benefit. That is just not true, specially in a capitalistic society.
If your reasoning had any logic, then casinos would be more valuable for society than hospitals, because there's more money invested into them.
The most money, globally, is overrepresented for rich people problems, like cancer and alzheimer. Globally, the most short term benefit for people as a whole would be acheived if that money was invested (as an example) into _cheap_ vaccines for AIDS, and other infectious diseases.
The bias is set by concentration of wealth, and while it is the way things work and we should deal with it, it is a flaw in the system.
Of course, the same thing happens in a less obvious fashion, inside developed and underdeveloped countries.
Pharma companies get patents granted , and then the governments that granted them, are not able to pay for proper treatment for their citizens.
If governments in general spent their money into funding research instead of paying for already invented medicine, there is no reason to believe, a priori, that the outcome would be worse than the current (bad) situation.
Of course, it is more obvious in the third world. There is little natural incentive to honor foreing patents, and that is why trade agreements that protect "IP" are so important for the US and the EU.
The issue is very similar to the proprietary software vs free software thing. The same thing was argued, back in the day, that big software could not be developed without funding, and the promise of future profit from licenses. That was proven to be non true. I'm really hoping something like that (not the same, but a system that shares some fundamentals witht he FSF) happens in the pharma industry. I think it could happen.
You could save half of the development costs upfront, as pharma companies already spend more on marketing than on research and development. BTW - only a small fraction of that money goes to the commercials you see - most comes from the armies of representatives that ply doctors offices with samples, notepads, pens, junkets, and other freebies. And it works - they doctors get the dog and pony show, and even if they don't take the free trips/tickets/gifts, they remember the sales pitch.
I happen to be suceptable to sinusitis, and twice in the past (when under full healthcare) I have been given Augmentin, then later Augmentin XR when it came out. A 10 day treatment, I found out once I switched to a high-deductible plan without a pharm co-pay, runs about $300. Now, it turns out that Augmentin is just a large-dose amoxicillin with a bit of clavulanic acid, a beta-lactamase inhibitor, which is added to extend the life of the amoxicillin. This winter I ended up with sinusitis following a mild head cold, and sucessfully treated it (with the doctor's permission) using a 14 day course of equivalent-dose amoxicillin. For $10. The previous physician had the big sell on Augmentin, and since it was "better" and most doctors don't keep up on drug costs the latest and greatest was prescribed. This is small change when you look at bigger, long-term drugs, but is indicative of the effect of the one-on-one marketing, and the return.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And YES, I am just a normal guy with no medical training whatsoever.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
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!
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.