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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.
it s nice to see humanity win one for a change
who can really put a price on that?
back in the day we didnt have no old school
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?
this is not about humanity. the only reason this drug even exists is becuase money was able to be spent on R&D to create or discover the compound. Brazil has just put another nail in the coffin of innovation by this move: if a company cannot make money from a discovery or invention the amount of both will decline.
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Patenting drugs that essentially exploit the poor and/or the third world is wrong. I appreciate that finding cures for diseases such as AIDS is incredibly hard work, time consuming and very expensive, but that doesn't give anyone the right to hold the world hostage.
Hopefully we'll see this happening with software patents in the next few months.
Summation 2
If we take away the incentive of patents, people will stop researching medicine, stop writing software, stop building devices, and retreat to the nearest cave where they will live out their short remaining time on Earth drinking rancid water dripping from cracks in the ceiling.
This is one horrible blow to humanity.
I wonder what the endgame might be out of situations like this.
Right now, my understanding is that to produce and get approval for a drug, you need to release its chemical formula and other information about it.
But I wonder if at some point in the future, if the drug companies get too worried about their profits due to genericization in countries like Thailand and Brazil, that they might try to implement some sort of "drug DRM." 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 (or have the actual drug only be something that's produced in the body through subtle combinations of various things in the pill, or keep the methods of producing the various chemicals in the pills a secret). I'm sure there are lots of bizarre ways that the drug companies could think up to protect the compositions.
Now, I'm not saying that any of these schemes would be effective at protecting the composition -- if the market for a generic drug is big enough, the labs in Thailand can probably afford to spend a lot of time with a mass spectrometer/gas chromatograph and unravel it, but that doesn't mean the drug companies wouldn't try, and waste a lot of time and effort in the process.
As we've seen in the battles over digital IP, there are a whole lot of things that can end up as collateral damage in the fights between rightsholders who see the gravy train slowing down, and people who want their products at a lower price than is being offered.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Ultimately drug companies do need to make a buck too. How are drug companies supposed to effectively control supply and demand to drive up prices if countries like Brazil just get drugs as they please. I suppose this is also a good argument against outsourcing the production of your drugs to countries that are not within your control or goverments that are not on your payroll. Sad...
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Thailand has ... let's just say limited impact on the U.S. economy. Brazil is a much larger trading partner than Thailand is. Probably not a wise political move to censure them.
Anyway, it's nice to see human life valued over financial values for a change.
Because developing an AIDs drug costs billions, but making it costs pennies. Merck can already rake in the cash on this stuff from first world countries. This is the "these people would never buy it anyways" subset of piracy, and while it makes sense when we're talking about movies to say "They shouldn't get them at all then", we're talking about lives here.
Any drugs to these countries and they'll be forced to reverse engineer everything from AIDS drugs to chemotherapy to antibiotics. Viva La Revolucion!
Well lets see.
A) That would easily take 10+ years, they need the drug now
B) Brazil likely doesn't have the drug making infrastructure necessary to even start making AIDS drugs without 5+ years building
C) The odds of any drug beating AIDS is huge
So you want them to spend 15+ years working in hope that they can maybe get a drug working when there's a great one sitting on the market right now?
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
what happened was this: merck had the AIDS drug and Brazil tried to negotiate it at what they could afford, merck declined, Brazil then told merck to screw themselves and got the drug anyway. it isn't so much an attack on merck's ability to make money off its own research as it is the idiot practice of denying DYING people medical treatment for the sake of said profit. moral of story: better to negotiate then to be bypassed.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I'm not saying it's just OK to confiscate drug formulations, pharmaceuticals is one of the very few areas where patents are generally a good thing, but in some cases it may be a legitimate national response. I'm sure they measured the consequences and are willing to pay the price from the fallout.
I remember seeing that "Brazil blocks Youtube" thing on slashdot, but seriously, I tested it back then, and there was no block, I talked to everyone I know, and they also noted no block. Not that one wasn't issued though, it probably was never enforced.
It was a BS case anyway, it was a public beach, everyone was there to see them having sex. If anyone was breaking the law, they were. Of course, with the justice system here as corrupt and moronic as it is, those kinds of rulings aren't surprising. Believe me though, 100% of the Brazilian people would be against any sort of ban.
Because they're too busy farming your coffee and sewing your clothes for $3 a month?
Idiot.
This just highlights in a new way, how far wrong we have gone with our patient system. Imagine if Salk had demanded a premium for his polio vaccine, the US government would have taken it under the same premises. The same if the patient holder for Biothrax had withheld rights from the US government for the anthrax vaccine in 2002. But wait those are brown people, foreigners dying from a disease with a social stigma, so let's call them thieves.
We are all just people.
Because it costs many millions of dollars to develop a pharmaceutical, and many more millions to hold numerous clinical trials to verify its effectiveness and safety.
Most basic research is conducted using public money anyway, but applied research is something else. Unless the U.S. government is willing to finance ALL stages of drug discovery via NIH, they can't expect private companies to undertake fantastic risks and expenses, if their profits are not guaranteed.
I am not saying that what pharmaceutical companies do to maximize profits and control their monopolies is entirely kosher, but same can be said for most other industries that are vital. So while we may push for reform and institute tight regulations over this industry (very logical things to do when talking about something that directly affects lives), let's not call them names for manufacturing the drugs that keep us alive.
As they say: necessity is the mother of innovation. As long as we have a need for medicine, someone's going to do the research to look for it. It may become less easy to justify spending millions in funding and make millions in profits off of discoveries, but that doesn't mean that innovation will stop.
Argh Matey - Brazil Be a-Savin' Yer Scalliwageous Lives! http://www.talklikeapirate.com/
(Seriously, why make them walk the plank just for being humanitarian?)
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Again. Last time the use of generics derailed the debate. Who knows what will happen this time, but the issue dovetails nicely.
Regards.
This move gives Brazil one more thing in common with Thailand, both of which have blocked YouTube.
This is a warped comparison... AIDS will hill hundreds of millions of people in our lifetime. YouTube is a floofy website. AIDS will still be a problem in 20 years. YouTube probably won't exist.
How are these two situations related, exactly? Are you trying to make some comparison because both involve "Intellectual Property"? If so, you failed.
Besides, even though they're not White Anglo-Saxon American Protestants, most Brazilians are people (some, of course, are special haircuts in your no-no zone), and if I have to choose between a lot of people dying and a bunch of lying thieves (converting gov't research money into private intellectual property for mega-corporations is evil in my opinion) getting richer, well, I'm going to pick the people (some of whom are always also going to be lying thieves), because I'm like that.
Honestly, though, it's the 21st century. As a race, humanity can do so much more for each other than this. Shrill cries of, "Let's give Merck our cash!" or "Pure capitalism would have fixed this!" just bother me. Capitalism is a good system, but it isn't magical, and we should try to avoid using it to price out a human life, or its span. Can we always avoid that? No, we're not on Star Trek. But it's nice to occasionally give it a try.
Yeah... we can't allow people go violate intellectual property in order to do such trivial and insignificant things as saving lives. Pirates beware, your illegal live-saving activity won't go unpunished!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Good arguement but the world is not so black and white. I'm sure U.S. offshore drilling of Venezuela will commence in a few years, of couse in "international" waters. Laws (including patent law) will be ignored if they are not in a nations best interest. Welcome to the real world. Don't worry Merck will be fine. They're not going to take their ball and go home. They'll make it up by charging more somewhere else.
These countries are treading on a slippery slope. At what point is it OK now to not pay for the hard work of other people, or to begin to directly steal from them? If this happens enough the company will go bankrupt as correctly pointed out by the parent comment. There will always be someone else who can justify why their need is to get/steal/borrow what they need to a greater and greater extent.
Yes I know that giant pharm firms spend a lot on advertising, but it also costs approximately one Billion dollars to get a single new drug to the marketplace (that's $1,000,000,000 !!)
Pricing is a problem for the third world countries, probably because it takes so many resources to make that product.
Now please pay attention - I'm not saying that Brazil is unjustified in it's taking of the drug and helping those people, but rather that there needs to be some limits so that this behavior is not abused, and ruins it for everyone. This sounds like a good problem for the U.N.
..........FULL STOP.
is taking the situation very grave, very seriously.
..... NOT !.
actually they dont give a jack.
Not every country has the twisted legal system and ethics to allow THUGS like RIAA, drug patent abusers get exceedingly rich in the expense of people's suffering.
Read radical news here
I'm not a biochemist, but I can't imagine it being too hard to mark pills sent to country X with some kind of safe chemical marker. Then tell the government of country X that you'll continue to provide these drugs at a proportional price as long as they can keep them inside their own borders. That should be incentive enough for these governments to take steps against smuggling and so forth. If not, and large quantities of marked pills pop up elsewhere, I'd say sanctions are warranted.
Wouldn't that be a win-win?
We don't have to like Brazil, or Thailand, or any of those other countries that block YouTube. I don't like it, and it's just blocking freedom of expression, which I think everyone is entitled to.
/can/?
But on the other hand, look at these drug companies. They're hardly hurting for profits, are they? Not when they can charge insurance companies 200 dollars a bottle for stuff like Nexium (I know, I use it).
When does the overwhelming greed of the corporate monolith have to take a back seat to helping people because we
I'm hardly saying that these companies need to start giving away metric tons of pills; but it certainly wouldn't crush their bottom line to offer licensing to produce these medications to poor countries and a very significant decrease. They'd still be making money, it would still be legal, and they'd get a spectacular PR boost. On the other hand, they could just be hardasses who need to be even greedier, and then the countries in question will just produce the drugs they need anyway.
I say good for them. Maybe if Congress wasn't in their pockets, they'd start feeling a little pressure to actually compete.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
It seems to me that you have a lot of drug companies spending billions on secretive research and probably duplicating a lot of each others work. Countries are then paying a fortune to these companies, funding the secretive and duplicate research. It would make a lot more financial sense if countries just banded their resources together and formed some kind of altruistic non-profit drug company.
No, sorry, it's all about humanity. In particular, it's about a government doing what is right for its own people.
For the record, I generally agree with the principle of intellectual property as a practical approach. It's not the only principle I might agree with, and I don't like some of the current implementation details in some places, but on balance I think copyright, patents and the like serve their intended purpose more often than not.
However, they are artificial monopolies, and monopoly holders are not subject to the usual economic competition in a capitalist market. It is therefore necessary for governments to regulate them, on behalf of the people, if those monopolies are abused. This is true of everything from energy and transport providers (where regulation is the norm in many countries where the services are not state-owned anyway) to copyright holders (where copyright is usually not absolute, and there are typically exemptions for fair use, fair dealing or whatever your jurisdiction calls it). The most common examples of such abuse are probably using a monopoly in one industry to force an artificial commercial advantage in an unrelated industry, and charging disproportionate prices.
The argument holds just as true for medicines. If the government of Brazil has made a good faith effort to negotiate a realistic price for the drug on behalf of its people, and Merck have refused to co-operate, then the government of Brazil is absolutely within both its moral and its legal rights to overrule Merck's patent in the interests of its people. No-one died and left either US IP law or US corporations in charge of the rest of the world, much as the collective arrogance of US big business would like that to be so.
Your argument about prevention of new inventions would have a lot of truth to it if this was a case of someone spending the money up-front on R&D, asking only a fair price for the results, and others refusing to pay. But I'm betting that's not the case here, and the price being demanded was in fact vastly greater than the proportionate costs incurred during R&D. If you read TFA and compare what Merck were demanding from Brazil with what they accepted from Thailand, you'll see what I mean. In other words, your point about companies not being able to make money from their inventions simply isn't true; they just aren't being allowed to make arbitrarily large amounts of money, at the expense of human lives. I'm sorry if you have a problem with that, but I really don't think most of us do.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I agree with you mostly, but the concept that the 'first world' should be held accountable for compensating the companies is just wrong.
Viruses spread without regard to income or borders. Education can only do so much to prevent a disease like AIDS, and even less with regards to more virulent infections of which there are many.
If ever open source, community funded development was needed it is needed in the fight against illness. It is completely unreasonable that this research & its results are being ransomed at a U.S. pay scale under U.S. patent laws.
Regards.
Year 2001: 5 (five) US citizens die in Anthrax scare. US government immediately starts proceedings for compulsory license for Cipro, wrestling the patent rights away from foreign company and competitor Bayer. This stance is widely praised as proactive and protecting the precious lives of US citizens.
Year 2007: Tens of thousand of people die in Brazil each year from AIDS because they cannot afford patented medication. Action from Brazil to force compulsory licensing is widely denounced as destroying the worldwide pharma industry, especially by US commentators.
Well...
Look, no offense, but I don't see this as punishment for R&D but punishment for greed. The drug costs, what?, lets be generous and call it $100 per dose. It's probably much, much lower than that but lets go for that. They sell the stuff for $1200. Are you honestly going to call that reasonable? I'm all for them recouping their losses but not by making 1200%+ profits on each sale, that's absurd!
You are right that punishing people who invest and produce isn't good for an economy, especially a capitalistic one. On the other hand allowing a company to charge insanely high prices for something that costs no where near that much to produce and, oh by the way, a lot of people NEED TO SURVIVE is just absurd. People complain about the gas companies getting together and charging 10 bucks more per gallon, this company is charging $1100 more per drop for their drug. At that rate they'd recoup a billion dollar investment in 800,000 sales. That seems like a lot but with an estimated 39 million HIV positive people in the world it's not, they're looking to make money by selling a little at a huge price to the few who can afford it rather than a lot at a low price. That's not a bad thing unless 1 of two things is true:
A) There are no competitors nor is there likely to be any competitors for at least 5 years
B) The substance is needed for people to survive
Both of these are true right now and so Merck should be selling the drug as low as they can, making something like 50-100% profits on each sale and planning to recoup their investment in 5-10 years. Instead they're making something in the ballpark of 1000% profits on each sale and probably trying to recoup their investment in 2-3 years. That's plain wrong and I'm glad Brazil chose its people's lives over the companies greed.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
On the other hand, South America, unlike Africa, another AIDS epidemic area, is not really poor. They have resources. They have major exports that they exchange for hard currency, both legal and illegal. Much of the poverty is the result of extremely unequal distribution of wealth, something that the United States is falling victim to, with it's gated communities, overflowing jails, and laws specifically aimed at keeping untouchables off the street. A robust economy depends on freely moving capital, and how can capital move freely if it is concentrated in one place. The current pipe can only be so big.
And then there is the growing sex trade in Brazil, particularly children. It is one thing to say all our ills are caused by the greedy drug companies, and companies certainly have some blame, especially when they push for short term gains that hurt the long term viability of society, but where are the jobs? Brazil seems to do a good job with educating the populous, but with double digit unemployment where is a girl to work?
Really, I can imagine how these talks went. Brazil wanted drugs at cost. Merk asked if brazil sold cannabis at cost. Brazil said drug use was voluntary. Merk said unsafe sex was voluntary, except for the girls and boys trafficked for sex. Brazil said it had no money, merk said the average income was nearly 10K USD, and had the hard currency to pay subsidize the cost of the drug for it's people. Brazil then just decided to ignore the patent.
In the end, Brazil just probably decided it would be cheaper to make the drug itself than buy it, and this way Merk does not have to deal with deflation in the price of drug due to third wold pressures.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Last time I checked, eminent domain is not "stealing" but an expression of a country's sovereignty. In many countries including the United States, a taking of property or an exclusive right under eminent domain results in "just compensation" to the holder of such property or exclusive right. If a drug company's Brazilian branch feels that the compensation that it receives is less than just, it can always sue the leader of the responsible government agency in the leader's official capacity (like a v. Gonzales suit in the U.S.), right?
Disclaimer:I'm not reading the /. backseat moralising that's undoubtedly in all of the posts above.
If American wanted to really do what's best for the world and its self then it should be spending trillions on things like developing vaccines and then giving the technology away for free.
Seems we have a better chance of creating an aids vaccine for $500 billion, cheap practical and non-polluting energy for two trillion, then spending a trillion on cancer, another trillion on mental health (because when college shooters get access to bio-tech, we've all got trouble.) and have enough left over to fight obesity and heart disease.
Or we could fight a war and go back to the moon. And I would love to go back to the moon, but lets take care of things here first.
Freeing the entire planet from most of its disease, pollution and energy costs would create a much stronger world economy, and more politically stable, not to mention the general good will that would be generated. It's something we can afford to, still have the talent to do, we just need someone to lead us there.
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.
How about the incentive of, um, making people better? I work as a biomedical physicist (MRI), and I'm paid by the government. In a university. Maybe this is a crazy European idea you've not heard of. We collect taxes to pay for them (and me).
People have been dying for hundreds of thousands of years. It's not like this is plague or something where a huge portion of the population will die off in a few years time; AIDS takes a relatively long time to kill people, and it's pretty damned hard to spread.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
The people who did the work got paid. Its the corporation who is getting ripped off, not any people.
Reality has a liberal bias
They should not be patentable.
Software in source form is made up of structured combinations of the elements of human communication (letters, numbers, punctuation).
Similarly, chemical compounds (aka drugs) are structured combinations of the elements of nature (atoms).
Patent the process that produces the drug, or the specific changes in equipment necessary to execute the process, but not the drug itself.
That Thailand (and probably soon Brazil) are on a silly piracy watchlist for ignoring dubious US patents is strong evidence that the drug companies are pulling some of the strings in our government.
last month, I caught a burglar breaking into my apartment. I didn't ask him if he was going to steal my TV so he could feed his family or if he was doing it for profit. I did unload 2 shell's worth of birdshot into him. My only regret is that he didn't bleed to death before the police tracked him down.
Youtube schmootube. How does this affect my rights online?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Then we'll live in a society where commerce and finance are held by private companies, but everything infrastructure (health service, roads, public transports, education and such) will be managed city-by-city, transparently, decisions being taken by referendum : you pay for the project that you approve of. NO TAXES whatsoever. But communities can sell services to industries. Like renting ad space, for an obvious, though obnoxious one.
And we can scrap the Intellectual Property bullshit altogether. Don't come whining about your development costs : one main reason it takes 25+ years for useful tech to go from lab to consumer is that the "inventors" want to Reap Profit Off Their Hard Work. Why can't they build their own industry? Their tech will be copied anyway, so, better to start soon before someone else invents it too.
Innovation is an evolutionary algorithm. So now that we have a tech that allows us to transmit zero-cost copies of any information with 100% fidelity, we can begin to value Intellectual Property at its marginal production cost. If that cost can be offset in the time it takes for a product to begin to get copied, then the Holy Necessary Incentive is met! Especially if the industries realize that their best way to make profits is to sell their products at such a price point that the people who produce them can afford them too.
In such a world we'd all have nuclear-powered flying cars.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
A-haha, haha... [tear] I would like some of that stuff you are smoking.
Mentioning stealing is just a troll. And it is perfectly OK not to pay people when they do not work for you. I live in US, and even here I believe that these people do not work for me. I'll pay them for the research results when I can tell them what to do. Why should Brazil or anyone else suffer if they think that medical patents are stupid? If medical patents are as awesome as you think, shouldn't we just wait a few years and see the Brazilian economy shatter? Oh, wait, you say, patents do not work this way. Americans will actually be in a crippling disadvantage if they have patents and no one else does. Well, duh. That is because sharing knowledge is more productive than creating scarcity where there is none.
Is it really appropriate to claim that a medication that is 28% taxpayer-funded is something Merck has the [moral] right to sell at whatever cost the market will bear? Certainly at the moment they have the legal right to do so, but I don't believe that it is ever moral to save lives based purely on a scheme to maximize profits.
What I'd LIKE to see is government research being hugely expanded--you can talk all the trash you want about "government waste," but basic government research into killing people has brought us nuclear power and satellite radio, albeit indirectly, along with the series of tubes we're talking through at the moment. I know it's not a realistic plan (too many lobbyists with too much money would stop it immediately), but it would be nice if government research money being applied to a problem would weaken the patents you get from it--accepting government money cuts your patent length in half, and you can never renew it, or something like that. I'd say something tricky like "reduces your patent's duration proportionately with the percentage of the research money that was your own," but I'm sure that'd just result in companies cooking the books to seem like they have a huge R&D budget.
And of course to get the money for all that, we'd just use some of the money we got from the Iraqi War. You know, the one where the oil basically payed for the war? Sigh. Sorry, I'm feeling quite cynical today.
The eminent domain power is used to *permanently* acquire property; a compulsory license, as the name would suggest, is not a permanent taking. The compulsory licensing scheme set out in article 31 of the TRIPS agreement sets out a number of conditions that a country seeking such a license must meet, and the terms of the license are also limited in a number of ways (for example, the license "shall be authorized predominantly for the supply of the domestic market of the Member authorizing such use").
Importantly, if the conditions upon which the compulsory license is based (in this case, the inability for Merck and Brazil to see eye-to-eye on price) change, the license will *expire*. Thus, it's not accurate to imply that Brazil is acquiring the patent by what is basically its power of eminent domain. Brazil isn't acquiring anything really, since a change in circumstances could terminate its rights to continue using the patent.
And lastly, don't forget that (since this is a license, after all) TRIPS requires Brazil to pay Merck at some rate which will have to be determined later. Brazil wouldn't have to do that if it simply acquired the patent via its eminent domain power.
please provide a (legitimate) source for that one billion dollar price tag, one that accounts for the bulk of the spending (lab costs, raw materials, etc) as i have seen that number quoted often, but never with any source to back it up... my suspicion is that its either a made up number, or that the bulk of that Billion is spend on fancy hotels, big houses, and big screen TV's for Corperate heads and Congress...
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
This is rather old news. Unless its not the same as I heard of Brazil many years ago regarding drug patents related to AIDS and Brazils growing problem with AIDS.
Perhaps Africa (leading nation in AIDS cases) needs to follow Brazil. Perhaps Brazil is a bit smarter than Africa.
The extreamist other side seems to think that if they let the world die they will still have income to do R&D.
In a country that supports the fraud of software patents, it doesn't mean much to be put on such a country of fraud, piracy list. In fact its probably honorable to be called out by such hypocrits.
Humanitarian? Maybe its more an economic and general human environmental issue.
How much money is raised in a month in the US, with a 10 cent gas price increase?
Postal rate hikes that the USPS doesn't need but government decided upon for escrow they (the government) failed in their own rules to designate what it is to be used for.
Where is my social security money going, that I'm not getting it when I retire (last notice I got from the SS admin said I'd be getting less then 74% at most)
Who is responsible for "the trillion dollar bet" (google it, read the transcript) and think world bank offer to make south east asia an interest bearing loan to get them out of this problem caused by who?..... and think world trade........center.
The Brazil response to AIDS is a non issue as the US simply makes up the rules as they go along and in this case they can just bill and hold in debt whom ever they choose, including its own citizens.
Which US controlled island do you suppose Bushs Bin Laden buddy is fearlessly relaxing on? Didn't we get his image Sadam put to death?
Ok, then come up with a reasonable argument as to why the corporation, having been ripped off, should continue to do business?
While the people involved have been paid, the corporation paid them. If you rip off the company, you are ripping off the people who did the work. Not right -now-, but in the future.
Of course, slashbots like to ignore distinctions like the fact that a company that goes out of business because it got ripped off, suddenly can't pay people to do the work. The people involved can always go into business for themselves (and get ripped off) or do the work freely (with no pay, of course, however that works.)
HIV mutates very quickly, so treatment drugs do have a lifespan. That doesn't excuse charging more than people can pay, though.
Do you know why you never see a "Walk to Stop Acid Reflux" or a "Save the Erections Concert", because there aren't charites raising millions a year for research for those things. There are many charities dedicated to fundraising for AIDS research, and there have been for over a decade. And charity funded research isn't all secrective and proprietary with their work, so much of what Merck is profiting off of here is publicly funded research. And on top of this Merck was price gouging:"The Brazilian government is asking Merck to sell efavirenz at US$0.65 a day, compared to a price of around $1.60 at present - a price reduction of almost 60%. Efavirenz is currently used by 75,000 patients in Brazil, and costs the Brazilian government $43 .8 million a year."http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/EED3BCE4-3992 -4842-8F37-9CAD750EE94E.asp razil is now buying a generic from India for $0.45. Let's say that $0.45 is the base cost, at Brazil's asked for price it would have been a 44% over base cost return, but nooooo, Merck wanted a 255% return. Who the fuck else operates on the assumtion of a 200%+ profit margin?
We are all just people.
Patents are government-granted monopolies. It is not an absolute right and has to be balanced against the need of the People.
Reading this news as a fight between corporate greed and governmental greed is the wrong way to look at that. Right or wrong, you try to choose the lesser evil. Everyday the little citizen get crushed for reason of State, for once it is a big pharma that pays the price.
BTW, the pharma spammer are quick on the button today. Disgraceful.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
many of us, probably older and wiser, do agree with you. Your troll moderation is due to the-world-revolves-around-me epidemic we're in. The fact that the GP will cheer on Brazil while not giving any of his own money to poor aids patients, is just another indicator of his intellectual and moral laziness.
damaged by dogma
If drug companies invested a significant percentage of their revenue on research. They don't (about 5%). It's *far* more efficient to give the money that would be spend on non-generic drugs to university research programs.
Spoken like someone in the first world. Someone who doesn't have HIV. Someone whose lungs are not filled with fluid teeming with Pneumocystis jirovecii. Someone who is not gasping to take the next impossible breath. Someone who will not die today once they finally lack the strength to take another tortured breath.
I've watched people die from Pneumocystis pneumonia. I've watched people die from Cryptococcal meningitis. I've watched people be literally consumed by Kaposi's sarcoma or Lymphoma.
But so you can get a clue, try this: have someone hold your head under water for a while. If you can just sit there passively and NOT struggle to save your life, you go ahead and tell these people to not manufacture HAART drugs for themselves.
In case you didn't notice, youtube was mentioned in the story summary. It shouldn't have been, but it is there...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?ne wsid=63260
.65 = 47,450,000 dollars per year.
according to that, Brazil qualified for 65 cents a day per patient but Merck refused.
200,000 * 365 *
200,000 * 365 * 1.10 = 80,300,000 dollar per year.
Merck shot themselves in the foot over 33 million dollars.
We are dealing with recouping a sunk costs. at the 65 cents a day, merck would have recouped over 225,000,000 dollars of their RnD Costs from brazil alone.
Mercks accountants and sales people need a serious talking to. Getting 47 million is a lot better then nothing. Before I get a snarky answer, no, 1 dollar a year isn't metter then nothing. 65 cents a day for every country would be more then enough to recoup their sunk costs, make a very nice mulit billion dollar profit in the limited pharm patent time period. After which they can compete in the generic world, or just go on to the next great pill.
InTHIS case it's is about Mercks greed.Since Brazil said they would go back to paying merck if they agree to 65 cents a day, merck is taking some time to ss if they can get more pressure on Brazil.
Prablably in a few week, Brazil and Merck wii have a deal.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
i'm brazilian (living in the u.s., though), and i was in brazil during that time, as a matter of fact, i was in two different and very distant brazilian cities during the period youtube was blocked, maceió and brasília. i couldn't access youtube in neither of them. i gotta say, though, that a friend from brasília who had a different isp (not brasil telecom) was able to access it. but i can say that the majority of my friends couldn't access it.
Every US consumer (of pharmacutical products) pays a staggeringly unfair percentage of the r&d costs of drug development. Any country that steals a companies product (drug formulae, manufacturing methodology etc.) should be placed under the harshest of embargoes until there economy goes completely belly up & their people suffer sufficiently to force change. Allowing this sort of rampant, ararchistic & criminal piracy cannot be countenanced; why next thing you know the savages will think that they have a right to circumvent the justly patented genetically engineered sterility of seed crops (implemented by Monsanto & others) so that, in the name of mere hunger, they could actually save a part of their harvest to use in the next season's planting, instead of paying the just price to the agricorp for more seed. This sort of marketplace terrorism must be stopped! Remember we have always been at war with (the) Poverty (stricken).
Why would I believe a report from a bunch of doctors who won't even let someone stay at their house?
I think the situation is a bit worse than you've been led to believe.
oh, and btw, the brazilian government actually provides most of the aids drugs to the people; this measure will save about U$30 million a year, according to the government itself. 30 million is nothing to the government, considering that it invested less than that on roads the whole last year. this is just another populist and dumb move, which can lead to terrible consequences.
Let me ask you this: How many AIDS cases get cured by aids drugs? What I mean is, how many of them have their lives saved, the virus eliminated, and can go on without needing treatment? To the best of my knowledge: none. AIDS is always fatal, all these drugs do is try to stave off the inevitable. Also, while on the drugs, you are still contagious and can pass it to others. However Anthrax is completely killed by a strong antibiotic like Cipro, you can cure a person.
Thus I see a real difference here. It's not like they are withholding an AIDS cure, that will eliminate the problem, they just have drugs that try to stave off the serious effects of AIDS for awhile. This doesn't solve anything whereas in the case of an Anthrax outbreak, distributing powerful antibiotics would be all it takes to save lives and stop the outbreak.
...is either 9th or 10th place in the world, depending on how you are calculating it, and is roughly tied for one of those two positions with Russia. And because of that, Brazil does indeed have a rather strong influence in the overall world economy.
I have nothing against capitalism as a rule, and I'm not naive enough to believe in some twee fantasy World where life-saving medications are free for everyone all around the World. That said, setting a price point on what is an ESSENTIAL medication of $1.59 per pill when the same company already sells the same product to another country at $0.65 per pill is disgusting. Merck are (or were) essentially holding the Brazilian peoples lives to ransom.
If Merck can afford to sell the product to Thailand for $0.65 and still make a profit (clearly as an Indian company can sell it for $0.45 and turn a profit themselves) then there is no reason whatsoever other than pure capitalistic greed why they could not have given the same offer to the Brazilian government. Don't forget we're not talking about the variable domain costs of marketing and staffing, the government is the customer - how the Brazilian government then choose to distribute/market the treatment is their decision and at their cost.
There are a great many products around the World that are sold for different prices to different regions, but in practically all cases you can permit the corporations involved some latitude simply because the products they're selling are luxury or otherwise non-essential. Gouging a customer with a 300%+ markup on a life-saving drug when you know the customer/market HAS to have it is disgusting.
Let's not forget that the research dollars that went into developing this particular drug came from U.S citizens.
I don't think this is a sign of "erosion of respect in American patents", this is after all the first time the Brazilian government has even invoked the power of "eminent domain".
Every piece of news I heard this week made me think that Atlas really is getting ready to Shrug soon. I'm not sure what is to blame- for example, we we see so many comments to this story like "nice to see humanity win one for a change." I suppose the only possible answer is that children aren't being taught to actually think in school any more. They're getting environmental awareness and world humanity concerns shoved down their throat, and they're memorizing some stuff for a multiple choice test, but that is about it. Well, we see the results. I think maybe it is time to consider paying (a lot) more for teachers. I want someone of my own intellectual ability to educate my children, and I can tell you I wouldn't work for 30K a year, nor would many others.
You see, capitalism is that system where everything that can be sold will end up being sold at its marginal production cost.
That's what happening right now. Capitalism does not need Intellectual Property rights. Because it actually takes time to even begin to copy a product, so if you recoup your R&D costs in that time window, you can sell the product at its marginal production cost; moreover, there will be less incentive to copy your idea so as to sell it at half the profit if your profits are not obscene.
The fact that Internet reduces the marginal cost of copying/transmitting information to very near zero multiplies the value of information, not reduces it. The value of information is proportional of how many people have it, because, when in more heads, ideas can evolve faster.
Intellectual Property rights actually only reduce the value of information. They are a state-granted monopoly. They must be scrapped. Otherwise China will eat us all. (Since our govts are too stupid and greedy to see to that, I, for one, welcome our new IP-disregarding overlords.)
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Take the cost of the drug as sharged by the competor out of India ($0.45 per tfa) use that as the base cost of the drug (although im sure there making profit on it, ill assume its AT-COST for the sake of argument), multiply it by 2, brings you to $0.90 per pill... now http://www.avert.org/worlstatinfo.htm/ estimates world wide aids infections at 37.2 million adults and 2.3 million children now thats 39.5 Million people world wide and growing (assume 40 Million for arguments sake) so at $0.45 per pill profit (total of $0.90 per pill) and a doseage of say only 100 pills per YEAR that comes to $45 profit per person... at 40 Million people infected, my math says that comes to 1.8 Billion in profit for 1 year!
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
From the Article:
Other countries, including Canada and Italy, have also used a clause in World Trade Organization rules to flout drug patents in the name of public health.
Under WTO rules, countries can issue a "compulsory license" to manufacture or buy generic versions of patented drugs deemed critical to public health.
But so you can get a clue, try this: have someone hold your head under water for a while.
Yeah. Because getting AIDS is exactly like having someone hold my head under water.
Hint: AIDS doesn't come looking for you. You have to go looking for it. That means you are not entitled to any free drugz, kthxbye. You're "entitled" to pay for your mistakes in life, just as I am, and just as everyone else is. That's really about it.
The other poster does have a good point, though, in that the use of government-enforced patent monopolies to enforce predatory pricing really is beyond the pale. I am starting to think the right thing to do is to nationalize drug R&D and treat it the same way we do space exploration, highway construction, public health in general, and other necessary but unprofitable activities.
I wouldn't use AIDS drugs to justify this approach -- again, AIDS is something most of its victims chose to get, regardless of whether it's politically-correct to say so -- but I still tend to think of equal access to health care as a basic human right for which we should take responsibility as a society.
As things stand now, though, those AIDS drugs were developed with a great deal of (mostly) private capital. It is simply not OK to socialize benefits of capitalism while privatizing the risks, any more than the converse.
i do understand research costs money, but please provide figures and resources to back up your wild guesses, when i argue my view point i do, see my multipul posts elsewhere in this story that relates to the profits made by teh drug companies at .90 per pill would come to appox 1.8B per year!
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
buying your drugs from the lowest bidder isn't always a good thing.
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.
A "compulsory license" is not the same as "taking a patent", it's a compulsory license, as the name implies.
Furthermore, the term "eminent domain" simply doesn't apply to patents because patents aren't "private property". Patents are temporary monopolies granted by the government for a specific purpose, and revoking that grant when the patent doesn't accomplish its purpose is not the same as taking away "private property". The only thing the government is ultimately obligated to observe in the granting and revocation of patents is that it is done non-discriminatorily.
Trying to equate a patent grant with private property is ideological bullshit; don't fall for it.
at all? No one, anywhere would do anything without a profit motive?
I think experience does not bear that out. Charitable institutions
come to mind. The fact that it is nessesary to have a "non-profit"
corporation type. Taking away profit does reduce incentive for many,
and there is nothing wrong, in the main, with profit, but is it more
important than people's lives?
On the 'subsitization' issue, should 'those socialists' be subsidizing
corporate profits? Also, in going for the hard sell, they might have
lost a possible profit, depending on the marginal costs of the item
in question, yes?
emt 377 emt 4
Brazil is still paying *someone* to produce the drug surely they're making a profit. I'm sure they would have been quite happy to pay the same price to the original company, but they refused to do business on Brazil's grounds.
This isn't about patents, it's about profiteering.
Go back 100 years, the U.S. was legendary for the blind eye it turned towards copyright theft - particularly of books.
Apparently, when the U.S. was a consumer, not a producer, of intellectual property, copyright had little meaning and they had minimal desire to stop its violation.
100 years on and a massive shift towards being a producer, other countries are terribly bad for acting exactly the same way the U.S. did when it was in that situation?
We'd better hope the predictions of China eclipsing the U.S. within 15-20 years are wrong. God forbid we have to deal with their being the only superpower, treating us like we treated others when we were the only superpower. There are more conclusive links between the U.S. government covertly supporting terrorist groups than there ever was proof of Saddam supporting them - let's hope another future superpower doesn't decide we need liberating.
The point of all of this is, yeah, your rights are being violated - but you kind of lose all sympathy when you were in the same position and did exactly the same thing.
I have to say that I really can't understand logic that says that all world problems could be solved if just western industrialized nations would be willing to throw enough money at them. That logic is dead wrong: throwing money has never solved anything, it would not bring freedom from diseases, pollution and lack of energy. Just to make my stance more clear: poverty, diseases and lack of infrastructure are usually the byproducts of war, bad government and culture gone wrong. Wars are not stopped by money, they are stopped by understanding real power, security and prosperity coming by building a nation. Bad government is not stopped by money, it's stopped by individuals that want to serve their people not themselves. Finally cultures don't change by money, they change when leaders of people come out and praise against the old habits and guide them to new better habits.
Lets take a case example on one of the root causes that drive poverty and diseases. A case of bad government in action is Brazilian government voiding Merck's patent on an AIDS drug. Yes, this is a perfect case of bad government. What the Brazilian government did was not to get rid of their AIDS problem, they just played little more time for the AIDS victims and they made a political move that makes the government look better in front of masses. What the Brazilian government actually should have done was to cut the roots from people having AIDS by both educating more and trying to change the general culture and to cut down the government bureaucracy that cripples Brasilia. And when I talk now about bureacrazy I have to first point out that the bureaucracy and government stupidity that we see in Nordic countries or in other western countries is so far out Brazil that you don't believe before you encounter it yourself. Just an example: in Finland it takes a matter of hours to start up company, in Brazil starting a company usually takes at least an half year, and in here I'm just talking about sorting out the paper work and other legal matters. The situation is that because economy, businesses and entrepreneurship are so badly crippled by government bureaucracy in Brazil, the unemployment is rampant and leads poverty stricken people into the streets and working in crime or prostitution. The horrible situation in here is that Brazilian government could very easily free it's people from poverty and diseases but because of rampant incompetence and bureacrazy the situation is what it is.
You say what? You say that you don't believe. You say that governments and nations should be given time to work things out and we should fund it. I say to you that is not the case, it never has been. You can yourself remedy your problems when you are willing to face the situation and are humble enough to start the work from the bottom. Case in point: in the beginning of 20th century, Argentina was in top ten of richest countries in the world, in the same time Finland was one of the most poverty stricken countries and by our current standards a third world country. After a hundred years of development, Argentina is now more of a third world country and Finland is one of the richest and most developed countries in the world. This case is definitely a case of bad government versus good government.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
Alvaro
The only company that could make it under license could only make a certain amount per year, and had no capacity to ramp up. They screwed around, claiming they could (but did nothing in particular). If they'd stepped forward and produced enough for the need, the US government would have happily paid the price.
The compulsory license wasn't about cost. It was about capacity. And the US DID pay a license fee to the company, instead of outright theft, as Brazil is doing.
On the other hand, with the amounts involved, if it was just a matter of a billion dollars to develop an AIDs drug, why didn't Brazil create their own and license it for free?
Oh, yeah - that billion dollars was for a SUCCESSFUL drug. They kinda left out the other hundred compounds they looked at, and the ten to twelve they actually tested, before the drug companies found that one drug that worked.
Then you get the ones that work, but turn up side effects when they get past trials. Vioxx, for example. major drug, well-liked by 99% of its users, and it wasn't until after they got it out into the open market that the (theoretical) side effects were noticed - and they were, truly, minor for pretty much everyone (tiny increases in health risks, and no actual deaths or injuries tied to the drug). And it was banned. Huge loss for the company.
Total actual cost to find a high-quality, high RISK new drug for a major disease, with full trials and liability coverage? Closer to five or TEN billion dollars...
Cost to produce some of these drug combinations? That's another story. Some of these chemicals take huge investments in machinery to even make, and the precursor chemicals alone put the price at ten to twenty cents per pill. Actual manufacturing can push the cost to simply produce one pill for some drugs into the multi-dollar range.
You mean like the half a million children who died last year of HIV related illness? (Over 90% of these cases were acquired during childbirth or breastfeeding.)
Capitalism did not create the conditions that allowed that to happen. (No, really. No, it didn't. Don't even try. It just makes you sound stupid.)
Capitalism also, as I suggested, isn't the right way to help those kids. The fact that there are quite a few AIDS victims who were infected involuntarily is a justification for changing the way we fund drug development. It is not a justification for punishing people who have already done the hard work.
"They're still mad about all the money they lost on Polio...."
noobcake or noobmuffin? It is the same price...
I talked to a store clerk for a small business that sell used books, games, and stuff like that here in Virginia. He told that a friend of his went to Thailand and brought back with him around 300 DVD's of recent movies that be bought for less than quarter each over there.
It is not so in Brazil. There was a recent article on the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper that read "Brazil leaves the list made by the US about the top most countries with problem on piracy". It is an interesting read. It tells that local companies together with the Brazilian Federal Police made several raids in places where piracy was running amok. This has been going on for over 2 years now.
The situation with the Drug patents have nothing to do with it, and I doubt it will put Brazil back in the US's watch list.
On the one hand, some people doing research don't get to see any profits.
On the other hand, millions of people die.
Gee. This is a fucking hard choice, man.
Really, I know Slashdot is a favoured hangout of libertarian fuckwads with a ossified sense of empathy, but christ, just shut the fuck up already. Listening to you talk makes me sick. I am ashamed to be the same species as you.
The drug's name is Efavirenz not Elfavirenz. The stupid troll couldn't even get the name right.
Actually, there was a block, but it was Brasil Telecom that used the decision to block access to the VIDEO (not youtube as a whole) as an excuse to block the whole thing. They've been having loads of bandwidth problems since Youtube became quite famous and people started to use their broadband bandwidth as advertised. Blocking the site was a way to remove a bottleneck on their own system, and that's why they happily blocked the whole website at once. I remember they blocked a portion of Nasa's website too because it was bandwidth intense as well. Other backbones not owned by them didn't have the access blocked at all, as it seems to have been observed on parent post.
Now, that episode lasted only a couple of days. To use that as an excuse to compare Brazil with a country that just suffered a coup-d'etat for trolling reasons is completely unfair and is offtopic.
Ok, then come up with a reasonable argument as to why the corporation, having been ripped off, should continue to do business?
They should not. If your business model is to exploit the needs of sick and helpless people you do not deserve to do "business". Drug research will still be performed, since governments will have an interest (big pharma doesn't) in keeping people healty (big pharma wants them to remain sick and thus need more medicine).
The industry you so valiantly defend has made a living out of bribing doctors, inventing diseases and performing cruel experiments. If they hadn't also paid off politicans they would have been subject to laws that prevent other industries from acting that way.
"These countries are treading on a slippery slope. At what point is it OK now to not pay for the hard work of other people, or to begin to directly steal from them?"
Maybe they could ask other countries who steal patent licenses from inventors, using the excuse that they're the government.
Such as for example, the United States of America
How is this any different than telling a farmer that you'll be taking his crops because you're hungry?
Because physical property and "intellectual property" are different, both as concepts and as legal entities.
For some reason, people seem to expect that their medicine should magically appear.
No, they expect to not be overcharged by a monopoly when he world is generally moving toward free markets.
Bad news folks, the scientists that create these drugs have to pay for food, housing, education, and healthcare just like everyone else.
And the states that fund most of the research do pay them for it. Why this incessant focus on the U.S. NIH as if the six billion non-Americans had ceased to exist?
Removing the right of the organization to earn a profit
There is no such right. In fact, in a free market, earning a profit means there is a margin for a competitor to sell cheaper than you.
The actual right you seem to miss here is a country's sovereign right to decide the laws within its borders. The world is not run by the corporations - yet, anyway.
Drug companies like to spout off misleading numbers about how much it costs them to develop a drug.
Instead of quoting the actual cost to develop the drug e.g. 250 million dollars, they will take the amount the actual cost to develop the drug over the time the money is used, say 10 -15 years, and do some math on what they would have earned had they invested the money in a compounded mutual fund, exchange trading, or other creative ways big corps make money. End result is a massively inflated sum e.g. 600 million which they quote to the press about how much it costs to develop a new drug.
I think we know what happens when the profit to be made from a medical patent skyrockets, its too easy for the holder to justify extortion.
At the other end, without profit from medical patents, there would be no innovation.
So, where did we go wrong ?
Time - a patent is way of giving credit where credit is due and thus providing funds for new research and development. The keyword being new. At some point, the information is no longer new and so should be released from an individual to the public domain. Its a question of when.
The patent system needs to have a cap on a per patent profit, a large enough cap to sustain research incentives, but if a patent meets the cap, the patent is then placed into a compulsory license.
The only argument then, is how to regulate the cap.
What we're talking about here is evil in its basest form - pay me or die. It's hard enough to believe that people would step right up and do this in public - but it's even harder to believe that there's people here on Slashdot that are jumping to their defense.
They'll be singing a different tune when they're old and gray and can't afford all the medications they need to preserve their health.
Two people in a prison cell, me and you. In one hour the prison guard will come in and ask each of us for a password. No password means immediate execution. I have the password. You don't. It is in a carboard box I have in the cell. You could look inside, but I tell you not to touch the box... because it's my box. Half an hour goes by, and you can't convince me to let you look inside the box. In 30 more minutes the guard will come. What would you consider doing ? And would you think I was being reasonable ?
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
Where people should be condemned by their (or their parent's) sexual behaviour. I won't discuss it here again, for it has been already discussed elsewhere in this thread. People should understand Brazil before judging it.
Even non profits employ researchers. They don't work for free. Any many still license the results of their work so they can do even more work.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
They cry poor and beg congress for subsidies for R&D for new drugs, and then charge us Americans outrageous prices for these subsidized drugs, and block competition, when the rightful ownership of these patented drugs is American citizens since we paid for the development of the drugs with our tax dollars.
So: American pharmaceutical companies should top the piracy watch lists, not other nations which use eminent domain to revoke monopoly protections where revocation of those monopolies IS for betterment of the common good - something which patents and copyrights is supposed to encourage, not restrict.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Wow, thought I was the only person who understands what I'm taking about. There sure are a lot of indicators pointing to the spread of socialism. The "stick it to the man" attitudes are absolutely surreal. And you never hear someone countering this stuff in the press. Heck ,the press is making Chavez out to be a "hero of the people". Crazy.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Nuke them!
So ,you work for a salary? Paid for by collecting taxes from companies and people earning a profit? Or donations? And does your government give away the results of your research? Dude, wake up.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
is based on the fundamental capitalist principal of MAKING MONEY. The Pharmaceutical industries 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 (acute = continuing illness that is not cured) over a long period that produces 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 and herbal medicines. Belief based "medical products" are the industry's equivalent of the Holy Relics that were produced on an industrial scale by the Catholic Church during the middle ages. They have no scientific basis, the do not cure any one of anything and they are merely cult of objects comparable to the flayed skin of Aztec sacrificial victims stretched over the face of the priests. Herbal medicines (to paraphrase the Skeptical Society) are dirty drugs on par with a cigarette.
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.
The Pharmaceutical industry had never even attempted to produce a single anti-viral agent beofre the appearance of HIV and most of the really succesful pharma products - sildenafil citrate for one - were discovered by accident.
It was only a matter of time before the mob seized the intiative and demonstrated that the concept of patents (and copyright) is part of a social agreement far more than it is any traditional example of arbitage. Their is no true barrier to maintaining the artificial concept of "patents" when the social agreement is broken - as it has been by the fairly cynical approach of making as much money as is possible through the explotation of the poor.
The saddest fact of this entire affair is that the UN was far to busy buying football teams for Kofi Annan's son and making money out of Oil for food in Iraq when they should have bought the patent outright with the full support of, wait, let me think for a second - every single government on the planet. But oh no they were bleeding their hearts out over all the other far more important issues such as doing nothing in the Balkans, Africa or anywhere else for that matter.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
As a matter of fact, as stated somewhere in this thread, Brazil AIDS prevention model is an example everywhere. They give free condoms, free HIV tests, free counseling, free medicine, LOTS of ads regarding sex safety (and no, no neo-con nonsense like abstinence). I went to carnival parties where I got DOZENS of condoms for free at govt. sponsored stands (and, as a good /.er, haven't used them ever since).
Get your facts right, people.
I'm sorry you're also unfamiliar with humour. I hope you didn't hurt your head. Perhaps you'd like an Aspirin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin#Discovery) for that, or maybe an Ibuprofen http://www.ibuprofen-foundation.com/what-ibuprofen /story.htm? And for the record, the pharma-industry is still alive and well over here.
When animals get over populated diseases bring their population down to lower levels that help maintain sustainability. Humans on the other hand think we are not animals and that we get to do what we want. I say who the f@#$ cares, aids is just what is needed.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
Except for the part where AIDS drug research gets tons of public funding, and is then given away to companies to charge lots of money for it.
A lot of the posters on the thread seem to be forgetting that detailed, public disclosure of the method to be protected is required as part of the process.
No patent protection => no public disclosure; the industry would rely on trade secrets. It would become even more difficult for a small producer to survive, as they would have no legal recourse if a larger producer successfully reverse-engineered their products.
In that case where everything's a trade secret, do you really think that Cipla et al would be able to duplicate the drugs at such low cost now that they'd have to reverse-engineer without knowledge of the patented method?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Actually, this is the way that most of the innovative research is done in the US; however, the pharm companies here have great marketing departments lying through their teeth about where they get all the really good ideas. -Most- of the research they actually do is just moving atoms around in extant compounds to get something that works the same but is newly patentable.
One -- the Indian company can save money because it only needs to reverse-engineer already-successful products. A large number of pharmaceutical companies' projects either end up as failures, either because they don't work at all, they're not a sufficient improvement over the products they're supposed to replace, or they're found to have intolerably bad side-effects. That means that Merck, unlike the self-righteous people at Cipla, need to recoup much more fixed cost per successful product.
Two -- the Indian company gets a massive short-cut on the R&D because (a) Merck's already pointed out the path, (b) they've put out a product which can be reverse-engineered, and (c) Merck is forced to disclose a lot of details about the product as part of the patent protection costs. So even for this product, their fixed costs are far lower. Merck also already went through the safety and effectivess trials. They've essentially been given a map to the maze that Merck already created -- no wonder it's cheap for them!
Three -- ignoring fixed costs, completely, like you do in your idiotic proclamation of a 255% return, demonstrates a fundamental stupidity similar to what might be associated with suggesting that no software developer should be paid anything at all because the marginal cost of transmission of the resulting data is approximately zero.
Now, for those that aren't morons, they can educate themselves on expenses and so forth. Merck, being a public company, gets to file thinks like Form 10-Ks that are available on Edgar. Study their balance sheets. Note that they're not making "255%" return. Also note that, if you want to complain about something actually remotely legitimate instead of looking like an absolute twink, that Merck spends more on marketing than research.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
It might be noted that, as with a number of other serious illnesses, HIV is far less prevalent in 1st-world countries than it is in the poorest -- ex. sub-Saharan Africa is the general region with the highest infection rates, but they also have little to pay for it.
At least, in this case, there IS some market in HIV treatments among the wealthy. If Third World governments set the precedent that they will ignore patents at will, then why should any pharmaceutical company research diseases that are largely plagues of the Third World, but essentially not a problem elsewhere? For these, the "gouge the first world" approach (which, incidentally, becomes disproportionately "gouge the USA", because of government-mandated price controls common to many other wealthy countries) is inapplicable.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
they have seriously jeopardized the incentive of pharmaceutical companies to produce useful drugs over the long term.
Yeah, because these sales would make or break the Merck company - NOT! You see, it is ALSO a drop in the bucket for Merck. They had sales of $22 billion in 2005, R&D was $3.85 billion out of $14.65 billion expenses (or 26%). Their drugs keep selling so I doubt they have been in the red since then.
The real issue here is whether a country has the right to define its own laws independent of pressure from corporations. And lo and behold, it has. It is also a question of market knowledge: Brazil are saying "you offered this lower price to Thailand, why not also to us? They have a higher GDP per capita and a lower percentage of people under the poverty line than us" and Merck didn't agree so Brazil shopped elsewhere. That's called free market.
And I really don't see what has that got to do with YouTube.
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).
What percentage of the cost of Elfavirenz R&D was publicly funded? My guess is probably around 0.1% or so. The same applies to almost all other drugs. At best the public funds some basic blue-sky research and maybe expedites the approval review. The public still requires clinical trials - which alone probably constitute 90% of the cost of drug R&D. If clinical trials were publicly funded that would probably cut drug prices tremendously. Sure, the blue-sky R&D is essential to finding drugs, but it is one of the cheapest parts of the whole process. Even if the trials are half as expensive (due to being half as long), the costs are still huge - instead of charging $5/pill maybe you can charge $2-3 - Brazil wanted to pay a few tens of cents.
No, AIDS is not even remotely contagious enough to do the job. Influenza, typhoid fever ("Black Death" of Europe) etc. have killed far more over the centuries.
- Sales revenue: 22,636.0
So where does the money go?- Manufacturing costs: 6,001.1
- Marketing & adminstrative costs: 8,165.4
- R&D: 4,782.9
Only 20% of the price of each pill goes toward future research and development... Marketing & administrative costs are double that. Ouch.Are you saying it is a pure coincidence that the eras of capitalism and scientific revolution overlap?
I claim they are very closely related, though you can argue about which one caused the other.
This is really total bull shit. Drug companies spend very little on R&D and most of their expenses are marketing, legal, insurance, and obscene bonuses for executives.
Eminent domain is needed for cases like this where the need of the people outweigh the need for a ceo to trim his jet interior in pure gold.
Good for Brazil
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Are they going to do the same with other imports? What incentive does any country have now to do business in Brazil? "We're offering $X." "We only want to pay $Y." "OK. We won't sell to you." "No, we'll just make the exact same thing and not pay you anything."
I understand that they're going to get a sympathetic vote because this is a drug for AIDS. Substitute 'Viagra' for the drug in question and then see if you're outraged or not.
Sorry, not siding with Brazil on this one.
i'm all for paying teachers more - teaching kids is a very important job and should attract the brightest.
in the meantime, environmental awareness and a concern for world humanity will do less damage than Ayn Rand though.
no taxation without representation!
... So what happens? Any research into "public health" drugs stalls and is left to government-sponsored science. You get X number of different boner pills and hair-growing salves. Wonder why this is already happening? And when Americans get sick and tired of subsidizing socialized medication abroad and demand the best world price for their medication (which is a law I would like to see: no drug company can charge more for a drug in the US than the lowest price for it charged anywhere else in the world), what next?
Alternately, keeping the formulations secret and not publishing any research results publically, killing research science.
Unintended consequences? You'll be choking on them!
ignoring fixed costs, completely, like you do in your idiotic proclamation of a 255% return
R&D is not a manufacturing cost, it is a one time investment. Yes, at first the markup from the manufacturing cost goes into paying back the investment in R&D, but once that is paid off it is no longer continuing factor in the cost of making each pill. Instead of being able to pay that expense off at $0.20 per pill, Merck was greedy and wanted $1.20 payoff per pill. Either way they were still going to make money towards paying off the R&D investment. Now they get nothing. It's not like they had cured AIDS and they were going to only sell one pill per person, they would still be making that $0.20 per pill everyday for year and the inital investment in developement would be paid off. In case you example of Merck's marketing spending didn't clue you in, the drug companies have a profit margin that would be absurd in almost any other industry. I have no problem with this when it comes to luxury drugs like Viagra or some baldness cure, but it's extortion when someone's life hangs in the balance and you still want to wring 'em for every penny. Not maximizing profits and losing money are not the same thing, Greed is the difference.
We are all just people.
That's a pretty pointless debate to hold while millions of people are dying, don't you think?
I see two countries, Thailand and Brazil no one is mentioning the country the article says is making it, India. Besides I support Brazil in this case, lives should always come above profits.
Never in the history of the world has a public system out performed a private/free market system. Never! In fact, I could name a lot of public societies that faulter (i.e. USSR and Cuba). The reason is because of incentive. No one wants to work hard when there's no reward. That's human nature.
Ironic? Cuba outperforms the USA in health care on may points. "...I could name a lot..."
I don't believe in "...no one wants to work hard when there is no reward...", but the parent does. Why should I waist time with him?
( I didn't even read the post, I was just looking for funny sigs...)
Finally a poor country is taking aids seriously and saying that a cure should be cheap, you should be praising this ! not linking it to other negative events, if they where deciding to forgot Microsoft's patents i am sure there would be a complete different tag line form slashdot community. Well aids is worse !
Study from Tufts
e wsid=6
d ex.cfm?DR_ID=17747
http://csdd.tufts.edu/NewsEvents/RecentNews.asp?n
Kaiser study
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_in
..........FULL STOP.
Here's a Kaiser study - the$ billion dollar amount is only the R&D /FDA trial costs. What about when companies get sued by lawyers for billions of dollars for crap lawsuits - I.E. Dow chemical for silicone breast implants - bankrupted for no definite scientific evidence, and now people are using them again.
d ex.cfm?DR_ID=17747
The Vioxx lawsuit is costing Merck between 4 and 30 billion$ for some shaky scientific evidence. There were perhaps 300-400 people who doctors though had deaths DIRECTLY contributable to Vioxx - now remind you , many of these patients had crippling arthritis, pre-existing cardiac conditions, were over 70 years of age. I've had patients tell me that they take up to 4-5 times the recommended doses of pain medicine sometimes. Do you think the lawyers, or clients mention that - of course not - they want their easy money. Do you think many of those people would have died anyway? - probably.
IF you are involved in medicine, and have some money, you will get sued. Every doctor and pharmaceutical company does, and the cost gets passed on to everyone else in the form of a 65 cent pill, as opposed to a 30 cent pill. THese class action lawsuits make multi millions for many law firms, because enough people in menial jobs don't want to work anymore , and are "injured, or think they are" (actual line I heard from an ambulance chaser commercial).
Link to Kaiser/Tufts study supporting the billion dollar R&D/FDA cost per new drug below.
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_in
..........FULL STOP.
The story says that Brazil will now "get the drug from a factory in India". This means it is not just Brazil that is violating the patent, but also India. Yet all the discussion here has only been about Brazil's end of it. How about India? On what grounds does India violate the patent, and does Merck have no legal remedy in India against this?
Well, if your thesis was true and we were living in a world that would fall into such a war because of a whiny company, I would applaud the total destruction of this world.
Just feels good to know that isn't true.
And Merck doesn't have to share, that Indian company already knows the formula/method to create it, so it doesn't matter if Merck decides to stop being nice.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Merck's do not grow on trees. If they did, Brazil could pick one off and have free lifesaving drugs.
Instead, every individual in Merck is an individual who entered the profession for their own reason - but probably all of them expect to get paid to do the work they believe in. And most of them would probably like to get paid as much as possible. They are not in it for charity. They expect to work hard, they expect make hard-fought breakthroughs blazing trails through medical science where nobody has ever gone before. They expect to put an end to medical conditions that otherwise would be unstoppable in nature. But they also expect to get paid. They do not WANT to work for free. The shareholders who invest in Merck's mission do not WANT to take a loss on their investment.
Intellectual properties rights are either respected, or they are not. If they are not, society will not succeed, because the best among people who create value will have that value stolen from them. If IP rights are respected, then a company like Merck has the right to negotiate as it sees fit. You, I, or the government can not dictate what Merck must do with it's property.
Mine is Good
In my opinion, the worst thing is other drug companies are going to be hesitant in creating drugs that can suit diseases in the Brazilian market. Brazil is a tropical country, the last time I checked and has numerous other diseases that affect that area, which are less likely to affect those in cooler climates. Now as a pharma company, why would I want to invest in creating drugs if my IP laws aren't protected against?
The current (majority) trend - in legal thought and implementation - is to treat IP basically as a Lockean Natural Right, which governments just codify as positive law. I personally reject that notion out of hand. (And for us Americans, I think Thomas Jefferson is probably turning over in his grave at the state of IP.) I agree wholeheartedly that IP is nothing more than an artificial government-sanctioned market monopoly, of often dubious quality, applicability, and duration.
I believe in giving incentives to create and rewards for creating, but the modern IP system fails to protect that most essential element: the public interest.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
but feel one side is being under-represented here.
I can see why Brazil (and other countries) do this - the drug is available and they can't afford to pay the asking price, and I assume this 'Stealing from the rich, to give to the poor' goes down well with their electorate.
Just to take AIDS as an example though, the world has known about this for a long time and many countries know they have a huge problem with it. Surely if a few of them got together and pooled their resources, they could have developed at least one or two components of the anti-viral cocktails that are circulating?
If Brazil and Thailand had bothered to fund research into a treatment drug, then not only could they have given it free to their own people, but I'm sure some licensing agreement could have been reached with pharma companies (e.g. you let us distribute your drug to our people and we'll let you include ours in your retail cocktail).
As it stands these countries are doing nothing, apart for waiting for somebody else to make the breakthrough and then stealing it.
The common argument that 'These pharma companies just make billions out of misery' is just complete bollocks. In comparison to the amount governments spend of healthcare, military, social state etc - the amount required to create their own pharma company is miniscule. The only reason they don't is because it's even cheaper to steal.
So if the NIH is putting up 28%, who puts up the other 72%? The NIH is by and large the single biggest funder. So lets say Merc put up the other 50%? Who gives Merc the money?
Investors. People collectively say "I'll give you money because I expect you to make more money out of that. Your incentive is that then I'll have even more money to give you, and we can repeat it. My incentive is that my money isn't doing any good just sitting around, so I'll let you try."
Is it a good deal for Merc? The investors? Apparently. Either side could walk away, but they don't.
Is it a good deal for all of us? It is, and here's why. The 28% we're putting in (via the NIH) is getting used. We're getting drugs. Some of are affordable, some aren't. But, no one has figured out a better way to do it. You can talk about making them spend less, or cutting their budgets, or price controls, or having the government take everything over. But they're all flawed. They don't scale. They take incentives away from the ones who actually have to do the work. Maybe the guys at the top are overpaid, but it sure lights a fire under the ass of the middle managers who know they really have to bust it to get to the top. And at every stage of the game, you're facing long odds.
Winston Churchill said "Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others." Capitalism too.
Troll Like a Champion Today
Yes, non-profits employ researchers, and they dont work for free.
But someone, somewhere donated that money ( invested without expectation
of return, no profit motive ). If you were correct in your assertion
that nothing is done without profit motive, this would not happen,
there would be no non-profits, and no need for the corporation type.
emt 377 emt 4
There are a lot of people who understand what you are talking about, but probably like yourself, most of us have jobs. The people who usually have the most time and energy to be visible and vocal are usually the ones who don't have careers and would stand to benefit the most from socialism. Think about *most* of the people you see protesting things. Either that, or they are celebrities who get all the airtime they want for their socialist causes.
A little of both might be nice. People are literally dying in waits for surgeries etc in Canada, with those that can afford it going to the US for expensive but potentially life-saving operations.
The big problem up here would be allowing for a two-tiered system without all the doctors etc jumping ship to the more lucrative private-funded clinics etc
At what point is it OK now to not pay for the hard work of other people, or to begin to directly steal from them?
Until you have your own industry which needs those patents and copyrights enforced. There is even historical precendent for this.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
It doesn't matter if the drug companies charge for the pharmeceuticals or not, it's personal responsibility and accountability in spreading HIV/AIDS. It's no secret how the disease spreads. If people would change their behavior the disease would stop. It's no different than tuberculosis, hepatitus and other communicable diseases. Don't engage in the behavior that spreads the disease and it will stop. But that means people would have to bring themselves up a level in controlling themselves and being responsible for their actions? Mmmm a novel idea that has gone by the wayside. PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY!
Vietnam, drugs, terror, Iraq... the system is the same:
1. Declare war.
2. ????
3. Defeat.
Sometimes, offending fanatically patriotic Americans is worth lost karma.
Bring it on.