Brazil Voids Merck Patent On AIDS Drug

JoeBackward writes "Merck has this useful anti-AIDS drug Elfavirenz, and Brazil has lots of poor people with AIDS. So, after trying really hard to get Merck to cooperate on pricing, the Brazilian government has decided to take a 'compulsory license' to the patent, and get the drug from a factory in India. This compulsory license is basically a way to take the patent by eminent domain." This move gives Brazil one more thing in common with Thailand, both of which have blocked YouTube. Thailand's compulsory licensing of Elfavirenz and Plavix has landed the country on the US's watch list for piracy.

Comments

humanity vs capitalism

[drfrog]

it s nice to see humanity win one for a change

who can really put a price on that?

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[Jarjarthejedi]

I have to agree on this one. Normally I'm against things like this because I personally feel that the more this stuff happens the less likely people are to work towards something, the whole private property issue. In this case, however, the pricing was just absurd, the company was not trying to make a slight profit by helping people (which I'm fine with) but way overcharging them. Good for Brazil.

Sure, it cost them a lot to make it. But this isn't a drug whose need is going to go away any time soon and trying to remake your investment quickly means that poor people can't buy something that can save their life. Crix whatever should've been priced in such a way so that 10-12 years down the road they began making a profit, not so that they start making profit almost immediately. I mean, what investor wouldn't invest in an AIDS drug just because they're not likely to recoup their losses within a year? We all know AIDS is going to be around for a while, cut your prices so that more people can get it.

But hey, just my opinion. Hopefully Brazil can start getting cheap crix out in their country and save some lives.

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[drfrog]

im not saying they shouldnt, but there is a difference between making a profit and gouging poor people for a drug they need

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[MrNaz]

Not all moves to place fetters on the free market are the result of the hidden agendas of slavering, bloody thirsty autocrats, despite the media's attempt to make it seem so. The free market will not feed the poor, or give them medication or save their lives, as none of those activities are profitable. Ideas that save human life are the property of every human alive, and I will fight until the day I die the rights of people to unreasonably profit from or withhold those ideas from humankind. Those of you about to jump in with "but who'd pay for the research" arguments, pull your pants back up and get away from me. I've heard them all before and written on the subject many times. If our society cannot place a value on the saving of life itself, then we need to have a good, long, hard look at the belief that our society is the greatest one on Earth.

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[richie2000]

Yes, because it didn't cost anything to do all the tons and tons of research and testing (not to mention the cost of education for all the scientists) to produce the drug. Let's turn that around: Merck did not pay one single dime for the education of those scientists. The US taxpayers did. Merck did not pay one single dime for all the basic research needed to develop the drug. The US taxpayers did. Why should Merck be allowed to steal money from the US taxpayers?

Here's some basic reading for you:
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/04/21/opinion /opinion_30032324.php
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244
http://archive.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/01/13/drug _patents/index.html
http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&t ask=view&id=1065&Itemid=8

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[laughingcoyote]

Absolutely silly. But it's a good measure here. Looks like Big Pharma's line of shit is considerably more effective than the RIAA and MPAA. Here's hoping they don't catch on.

Here's the reality of the situation. The biggest expense to Big Pharma is not research and development (which mainly takes place in universities, including a lot of public ones. Big Pharma does not fund those. You and I do.) It is not testing (and that could be handled entirely by the FDA, without their involvement at all. A lot of it already is. Big Pharma does not pay for the FDA. You and I do.) Their biggest expense is not manufacturing the pharmaceuticals, which, as should be obvious here, can be done pretty cheaply. Their biggest expense is wining, dining, and schmoozing doctors to use their medicines. To advertise on TV, to get patients to push doctors into getting them whatever medication that is. And to pay overpaid executives.

Let's cut out the middleman, and one of the biggest expenses here-the millions-per-year CEOs. Fund the universities well to develop the drugs. They will develop drugs for Third-World maladies, once the impetus to "make something you can sell" is gone. Have the FDA entirely in charge of testing, and farming out production-just production-to corporate entities. There we go.

Under the current system, there's far more incentive to look for treatments rather than cures. A treatment is a lifelong paycheck, a cure is a one-time payment. There's far too much impetus to develop Viagra rather than treatments for diseases that kill millions in poor countries. There's far too big a temptation to hold back a slightly-improved formulation until the patent on the current one is about to expire, and to use it to extend the patent far longer than it was intended to last. If that system collapses, I won't shed too many tears. Something better will replace it.

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[Mark_in_Brazil]

It sure is nice to live in a country that makes it very clear the dangers of aids, I'm not so sure Brazillians have that luxury.

While I agree with the overall point your post makes, I'd like to tell you that Brazil has an outstanding AIDS policy, one that has been praised by the WHO (called OMS here - Organização Mundial de Saúde) and copied by numerous other countries. Brazil's policy includes free distribution of condoms, distribution of clean needles to addicts of intravenous drugs, and free access to the best and most modern drugs. It also includes free HIV and STD testing, a service I've personally used a few times. I am not in a high risk group, but it's good to be sure. Further, the Brazilian government's AIDS policy includes education. I myself learned quite a bit from the people at the government health center near my apartment where I have gotten HIV tests. The test result is given by a counselor, and the counselor gave me a lot of information I didn't previously have about STDs and HIV. Since I am highly educated and generally try to keep myself well-informed, I was surprised at how much basic information I didn't know before the counselor told me.
So in Brazil, in fact, the dangers of AIDS are made very clear by the excellent educational portion of the AIDS policy. Further, unlike the USA, insane religious fanatics don't have the power to push idiocy like the "abstinence only" sex education pushed in a lot of places in the USA despite having been repeatedly proven not to decrease teen pregnancy at all, but proven to lead to increased incidence of STDs, including AIDS. So let me bounce it right backatcha and say it sure is nice to live in a country where the public interest is placed above the sensitivities of lunatics who want to impose their beliefs on others, even if imposition of those beliefs can be a death sentence.

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[Waffle Iron]

Which basically makes it state-sponsored IP-scoffing.

You say that as if "IP" were a God-given right. It's not: "IP" is a collection of government entitlement programs, and what a government gives, a government can take away.

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[aurispector]

It's ridiculous that these attitudes still persist. Every time I hear the claim that AIDS is the patient's fault I want to smack someone. There are at least a dozen ways people could contract the disease innocently and unknowingly. Sure, some people take risks and pay the price, but for instance in Africa the infection rates are so high because of ignorance about the disease, not because they are all moral failures.

Merck does have a right to recoup their development costs-after all they have to save up for the next round of drug liability lawsuits like the vioxx fiasco.

Still, they ought to play smarter and drop costs when countries try to negotiate price-the tactic of countries taking a compulsory license is a big weapon against which they have no counter. They could sell AIDS and malaria drugs cheap and look like angels whilst continuing to price gouge for boner pills. Problem solved!

Re:humanity vs capitalism

[nosferatu1001]

Personally I see nothing wrong with making money through prostitution is not a shameing occupation. AS long as you have free choice about it and it is properly regulated, then I see no problem. But then I peronally believe sex between consenting parties is fine.

Finally, you made the classic straw man of suggesting because I liked ONE aspect therefore I must like it all. I agree Holland has problems, however it is a MUCH bettwer country to live in than the US. Much more free, in the ACTUAL versus religious rights idea of it....

youtube

[gargletheape]

you know what else Brazil and Thailand have in common? A boisterous tourism industry and hot girls. Seriously, what does youtube have to do with this story?

Re:"Black Box" Drugs?

[haluness]

> Rather than making the composition of the drug open, don't release what's actually in it,
> and just test it as a 'black box,' show empirically through tests that it's effective and
> reasonably safe, but dope the actual pills with a lot of random substances that make it
> difficult to reverse-engineer

I really can't forsee any form of DRM for chemical compounds. It's quite like DRM for music - at one point the music has to be played on a speaker. Similarly, if you're going to make a drug, you're going to have to give the pill out at which point you have the whole field of analytical chemistry (mass spec, HPLC etc) at your disposal!

Furthermore, adding random substances to it, doesn't really hinder the identification process - they'd just show up as separate peaks on the spectrum. In addition randomly adding substances to a drug mixture would probably mess up pharmacokinetics which would have to be restudied all over again.

Unfortunately the chemical world is a little bit messier than the digital world :)

Re:This is a very slippery slope -when does this e

[MojoRilla]

Stop believing big pharma's FUD.

There are several significant factors undercutting this supposed billion dollar price tag. The first is that AIDS research has received significant public funding, and second is that antiretroviral drugs have the shortest time to approval of any class of drugs, approximately half the time of normal clinical trials (the mean time for antiretrovirals is 44.6 months, compared to an industry average of 87.4 months).

See this report from Doctors Without Boarders for more information.