Slashdot Mirror
AIDS Drug Patent Revoked In US
eldavojohn writes "Doctors Without Borders is reporting that four patents for tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, a key AIDS/HIV drug, have been revoked on grounds of prior art. This is potentially good news for India & Brazil who need this drug to be cheap; if the US action leads to the patent being rejected in these countries, competition could drastically lower prices. But the ruling bad news for Gilead Sciences. The company has vowed to appeal. We discussed this drug before."
Doctors Without Borders is reporting that four patents for tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, a key AIDS/HIV drug
And here I was, thinking that they were trying to patent an obscure Russian playwright.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Nice. Squeezing a buck out of the poorest and sickest people in the world. Gilead Sciences makes the *channers look like Mother Teresa in comparison. Par for the course in the Pharmaceutical industry.
Now if they stop granting patents on chemical compounds and their use and return to granting patents only on synthesis and novel purification methods that will be really worth cracking a bottle of bubbly.
The chemical and pharmaceutical industry happily grew to become one of the biggest contributors to developed nations GDP using only this kind of protection. It does not really need anything more. Anything more is just protectionism and racketeering.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
This story doesn't address the core issue. The conflict between drug patents and public health.
why can't taxes pay for medical research? (not that I trust the government that much) but it seems like it's as much in the public good as good roads.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Could Antigua have produced the medicine as part of their court winnings, or is that limited to copyright only? I would love to buy exact copies of name brand drugs at their true value, while sticking it to big pharma at the same time!
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
I understand that the pharmaceutical companies need to get money for what they invested in developing the drugs but I really don't think they are losing (a lot of) money on the generic drugs sold in poor countries since the people there don't have money to buy the "real" expensive ones. So it's either you let does people use cheap generic drugs or let them die since they can't afford the medication.
I personally believe all health care, including R&D should be government ran.
That's not to say that private industry has no place in health care. I just believe the government should be at the fore front in terms of research and patient care.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
It kind of makes me wonder why they did the Amazon 1-click re-examination before this one, I mean HIV drugs vs. Click and Ship?
Let's get our societal priorities in order!
AIDS is a big issue. We are losing more people to AIDS than to all other causes of death combined atm. And here our health minister is advocating curing AIDS with beetroot and other veggies.
Fighting over a drug that could potentially save/improve lives misses the point. Get it to the people! They desperately need it.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
STOP FUCKING LIKE MINDLESS ANIMALS.
Seriously. Show some self control and wait a bit, use a condom, get a test, etc. You have to either 1) intentionally stick your dick into a pussy/asshole, or 2) allows a dick to penetrate you and ejaculate in you to get infected. People who show less control than bunnies is the main cause of infection rates. You're horny while you're waiting? Masturbate!
For those that get infected due to rape, are born infected due to a mother who acts like above, get a tainted needle while undergoing a medical test, receive tainted blood, then I TRULY sympathize. These people truly deserve help.
But for those who can't keep their dick in their pants, spread their legs for any goober, or are junkies, you deserve what you got.
Your taxes already do pay for research - through NIH grants, tax breaks for pharmaceutical companies, and then after the drug is almost fully developed the government often gives the patent to an industry 'partner' to bring to market. A good example is AZT, the first ever anti-HIV medicine. The lion's share of the cost for developing AZT was paid by our tax dollars. Then Glaxo-Wellcome stepped in for the last bit and viola, they have an exclusive right to sell a life saving drug for whatever the market will bear.
From Physicians for a National Health Program's website: "15. Taxpayers pay for most research costs, and many clinical trials as well. In 2000, for example, industry spent 18% of its $13 billion for R&D on basic research, or $2.3 billion in gross costs (National Science Foundation 2003). All of that money was subsidized by taxpayers through deductions and tax credits. Taxpayers also paid for all $18 billion in NIH funds, as well as for R&D funds in the Department of Defense and other public budgets. Most of that money went for basic research to discover breakthrough drugs, and public money also supports more than 5000 clinical trials (Bassand, Martin, Ryden et al. 2002). Taxpayer contributions are similar in more recent years, only larger." http://www.pnhp.org/news/2004/february/will_lower_drug_pric.php
So they paid 2.3 billion (tax subsidized), and we kicked in 18 billion. Then they get to charge us for access to the drugs for which we paid 95% of the basic research costs.
Though you may say that PNHP is a bunch of hippies, so if you prefer a more grandfatherly source the AARP do a decent job too: http://www.aarp.org/bulletin/prescription/double_taxation.html
Of course that is the reason that while you may not trust the government, they could be a much better steward of medical research than market forces. Market based R&D is inherently morally corrupt. It can't be otherwise. If its not obvious because of the fact that more R&D is spent developing drugs to give octogenarians a hard-on and a full head of hair than to offer effective treatment for malaria that kills millions each year in the developing world, MSF gives a great summary of the reasons that market based R&D is wrong: http://www.accessmed-msf.org/main/medical-innovation/introduction-to-medical-innovation/what-is-wrong-with-r-d-today/
Though I do agree with you that at present I don't trust the government. Not that they do bad research... the NIH and the researchers they fund are amazing. But I don't trust the corrupt system that gives the breakthrough drugs that the government develops into the hands of private industry so that they can extort millions of Americans for the price that the 'market will bear' for drugs they may need to survive.
The $800 million figure is based on the small unrepresentative subsample of all new drugs. It excludes the majority of "new" drugs that are extensions or new administrations of existing drugs, as well as all drugs developed by NIH, universities, foundations, foreign teams, or others that have been licensed in or bought. Variations on existing drugs probably cost much less because so much of the work has already been done and trials are simpler.
About half of the $800 million figure consists of "opportunity costs", the money that would have been made if the R&D funds had been invested in equities, in effect a presumed profit built in and compounded every year and then called a "cost." Drug companies then expect to make a profit on this compounded profit, as well as on their actual costs. Minus the built-in profits, R&D costs would average about $108 million 93% of the time and $400 million 7% of the time.
The $800 million estimate also does not include taxpayers' subsidies via deductions and credits and untaxed profits (DiMasi, Hansen, and Grabowski 2003; DiMasi, Hansen, Grabowski et al. 1991). Net R&D costs are then still lower.
Contrary to some press reports from the industry, screening for new compounds is becoming faster and more efficient and the time from initial testing to approval has shortened substantially (Kaitin and Healy 2000). The large size of trials seems more due to signing up specialists to lock in substantial market share. Advertising firms are now running clinical trials (Bassand, Martin, Ryden et al. 2002; Peterson 2002; Moyers 2002).
I am a medicine geek and will offer a simple translation for computer geeks who may be less familiar with this situation. Put very simply:
Big Pharma = Micro$oft, SCO, MPAA/RIAA
MSF, Developing nations like Brazil and India who produce medicines for the developing world in violation of the patent = Linux, EFF, University of Oregon et al.
i just talked with a guy from the pharma industry and he told me that they were working with about 800 colleagues on developing new drugs, but they would come up with only about 1 *prospective* result per annum. while there was a competing startup, which employed instead of manpower other means - extensive simulations, it know-how, etc - they succeeded to come up with 3-6 prospective results per annum. so might be that these guys are really just stalling the transformation from a heavily human based research to a high-tech approach?
;)
one more thing, pharma research is expensive and thus highly contributing to the innovation expenditure of states, so there might be also political motives behind the financial ones...
anyway pfizer seems to be closing up their research shops, a lot of the pharma brainshare is going to have to cope with the biotech wave.
"Because it's damned expensive and takes a long time to prove to the FDA and society-leeching lawyers that a product is (relatively) safe."
"Relative" as long as it's not you.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
It's a me-too drug, but so are Levitra and Cialis.
Yet I am more inclined to believe they want to fund cures as much as anything else. Why? Because cures/vaccines would be the big money show. Think of it this way, if a company does come out with a drug that cures "X" you can be damn sure that if the cost of using it is seriously lower than treating it that it would become mandatory. Knowing how most things work you would need booster doses at intervals during your life. It also doesn't hurt if your cure whacks a competitors value.
The added value to the companies selling "cures" and the like is in their side medicines, the erection meds, the beauty meds, etc. Suddenly the rest of their products look better because of their past successes.
Dead people don't buy drugs, and while maintenance works it also leads to more dead people than cures. With cures you leave open the road to fix something else wrong with the person, perceived or real. Besides if these companies are truly smart they diversify... into things living people want to do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There are no double blinded controlled studies of AIDS drugs that have actually proven, using clinical endpoints, that taking an AIDS drugs will extend your life a single day. The "fast track" approval process for AIDS drugs is farce, driven by the political pressure to "do something!", and nothing like the process that a heart medication for the general population has to go through.
It's more then proven... more and more people every day are realizing it.
AIDS is perfectly treatable and reversible without these drugs. I have seen friends go from healthy to very sick in a matter of months after taking the combos.
Meanwhile every day I meet more people refusing the medication (like myself), who are perfectly healthy, despite of bad lab numbers (High "viral load", low CD4).
It's a scam. A lot of things can cause immune deficiency. HIV is not one of them.
December 08, 2006
A Brief History of AIDS
It has been 22 years since "HIV," "a variant of a known human cancer
virus," was announced by media press release as being the probable
cause of AIDS by Dr. Robert Gallo and Health and Human Services
Secretary Margaret Heckler. Thus it has been about 22 years since Dr.
Gallo rushed that same day to patent the first "HIV" test kit, and was
subsequently convicted of scientific misconduct by the Dingell
Commission and the Office of Scientific Integrity of the NIH for
attempting to steal Luc Montagnier's so-called "HIV-virus isolate
[1]."
It has also been about 22 years since chimp colonies were injected
with "isolates" of "HIV" obtained from AIDS patients, but have yet to
become ill, as they sit in their new 27 million dollar retirement
homes [2].
At the beginning of HIV testing, it was known that "68% to 89% of all
repeatedly reactive ELISA (HIV antibody) tests represent false
positive results among sperm donors [3], and 14 years ago, it was
reported that "HIV-like sequences exist in normal in human,
chimpanzee, and rhesus monkey DNAs" [4]. That same year, it was
reported that the hepatitis B vaccine causes false positive "HIV" test
results [5].
It has been about 14 years since The Veterans Affairs Cooperative
Study Group reported that "AZT disproportionately harmed Blacks and
Hispanics, and provided no benefit to the quelling of advancing immune
suppression in Caucasians" [6].
It has been about 12 years since the announcement of the Concorde
study reported that "The results of Concorde do not encourage the
early use of zidovudine (AZT) in symptom-free HIV-infected adults.
They also call into question the uncritical use of CD4 cell counts as
a surrogate endpoint for assessment of benefit from long-term
antiretroviral therapy" [7].
It has been 11 years since it was reported that flu vaccines cause
false positive "HIV" test results [8]
It has been about 9 years since it was reported that "no
seroconversions" were observed among 175 HIV-discordant couples (where
one partner tests positive, one negative), for a total of
approximately 282 couple-years of follow up in a 10- year study [9].
It has been about 7 years since it was published in The Journal, AIDS,
that children born to ZDV-treated mothers "are more likely to have a
rapid course of HIV-1 infection compared with children born to
untreated mothers, as disease progression and immunological
deterioration are significantly more rapid and the risk of death is
actually increased during the first 3 years of life" [10].
It has also been about 7 years since it was known that goats and cows
test "HIV-positive" [11].
It has also been It has been about 4 years since the announcement in
The Journal of Virology regarding the severe toxicity of saquinovir
and other protease inhibitors [12], and about 2 years since the
announcement in the New England Journal of Medicine that vitamin
supplements can ward off progression to AIDS in the absence of HAART
(Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy) [13].
It has been about 2 years since the announcement of the failure of
AIDSVAX, the 120 million dollar effort to vaccinate against "HIV"
[14], and 2 years since the Red Cross reported that even after
repeated testing using different test kits, low-risk populations, such
as blood donors (or military recruits) will typically yield 12 (PCR)
positive or 2 (ELISA) positive results out of 37,000,000 samples,
leaving potentially 10 out of 12 false positives, depending on which
test kit you believe [15].
It has more than a year since the announcement that the government's
chief of AIDS research, Dr. Edmond Tremont, rewrote a safety report on
a U.S.-funded drug study to change its conclusions and delete negative
information, and later, ordered the research resumed over the
objections of his staff, so that George W. Bush's pharma
With nothing more than varying the compression of the pill, or using a time release method developed in the 50's mostly involving coating half of a capsules content in wax -- companies have claimed new patients for a variety of pain drugs. With every single one of them being extremely old substances, well out of any patent on any country laws on earth.
Having achieved these patents with no more innovation than a few simple blood plasma level tests, and a few grand for a better pill press. The drug companies have proceeded to mark up the same substances 160,000%, 500,000%, 110,000%, 57,000%, 84,000% respectively for the top selling compounds. Even the illegal drugs markets for cocaine & heroin do not achieve these levels of markup in any form.
Similarly, the markup in generic versions of the few of these pain killers which have become generic is a startling 6000% above costs by the time they hit retail.
I feel so served by this regulation, let me tell you. I love government intervention in my ability to buy drugs. If they were so careless as to allow me to purchase directly from the manufacturer, I might be able to do such horrible things as buy a year and half worth for less than $25 instead of $740.00 a month for a single RX from community pharmacy. Absolute horror.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
You should want Pharma's profits to be high so the investor money will flow there, instead of to oil stocks or gold. You do know that it takes 10 years and up to a billion dollars US to bring a drug to market. There has to be a pot at the end of the rainbow or investors won't invest! That's how it works, and while not perfect, it is a hell of a lot more efficient than shaking tax dollars out of people and filtering it through the federal bureaucracy. Compare the US Postal Service to UPS or FedEx and you'll see the same thing. Yep, the government does everything else so well, let's hand over this to them too!
Go ahead, take away their patents or institute price controls, and watch the money dry up. That will help everyone...not! You can't force investors to invest, no matter how much compulsion or Robin Hood economics you want to institute.
I just wish someone would make a list of the top 50 drugs in the last 50 years and who made them and how they were financed. I'm guessing it wasn't from a communist country.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Donald Rumsfeld, and that he never sold off his shares while holding office.
Gilead also makes tamiflu(which made record profits during the asian Flu scares you know while Donald Rumsfeld held office)
When HIV and AIDS were first discovered, and the epidemic that was unleashed started, the life expectancy of the unfortunate recipient was about 10 - 15 years. Now, however, after only 10 years of drugs and healthcare being on the market, life expectancy is much, much better. How are these drugs making people's condition worse? Is living a worse fate than dying?
And you can't tell me that all those people who are now surviving the various types of cancer that would have died just 20 years ago is proof that people are being denied healthcare and drugs. People that would have died 20 years ago are now living full, happy lives. Well, not happy, that that's another story about how people were lied to 50 years ago about having flying cars now. On second thought, where are the flying cars...
But I digress. Seriously, for all of Big Pharma's flaws, they do help people. Medicines do cost a ton of money to research, develop, test, retest, go through FDA testing, test one more time for good measure, and finally release. Plus, after releasing the drug, more testing is done through the doctors prescribing it, as well as the company having to spend money to get the word out. Yes, advertising. It is part of it. The best wonder drug in the world won't work if nobody knows about it.
Plus, part of those high costs are for all the research on drugs that didn't work. Just because a drug is researched and millions spent on it doesn't mean it will ever get to market. One hiccup along the way can be enough to send the companies back to the drawing board. On the topic of this, costs are also raised when the company has to basically protect itself financially from when a drug reacts poorly with someone, they die, and the company is sued. Sure, it may have worked on 99,999 other people, but one wrongful death lawsuit can set a company back millions of dollars.
Last, but not least, when a drug doesn't work, it is not a complete loss. The company then knows what won't work. They can still salvage research from the drug, how it affected the virus/bacteria, and move on from there. Storage of these maybe-medicines can't be cheap, what with regulating everything from temperature and humidity to making sure that the computer backups of the backups are always up and running, because if these people lose files, it isn't just the courts they have to worry about, it is also the fact that people can die from lack of information. So their systems have to be top notch at all times. That isn't cheap.
Oh, and one last thing. As much as everyone demonizes Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation does do a lot to help people. Just because his business practices weren't always on the up and up doesn't mean he's a total loss in the way of morality.
I know that I just lost half the support of Slashdot when I wrote that last comment. Oh well. Can't win them all.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Your money or your life.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
One of the real problems here is the Bayh-Doyle Act of 1980, which allowed publicly funded researchers (including universities) to patent or otherwise own the intellectual property rights of inventions funded by your tax dollars and mine.
Before 1980, companies had to do all the research work themselves. If they were assisted by a university's research lab, and if that lab were funded by the Federal government, then intellectual property rights would be held by the government. If Whatsamatta U discovered how to synthesize an enzyme, for instance, no one could ever patent that process. The fruits of publicly funded research were public.
After Bayh-Doyle, everything changed. Universities could patent their publicly funded discoveris, so they were free to enter into partnerships with corporations - the universities, funded by the government, do the lion's share of research. The corporations figure out how to turn discoveries into marketable goods. Everyone wins - except for the people who actually paid for the research in the first place: US taxpayers.
It's also good news for the US which needs this drug to be cheap. AIDS patients aren't earning a lot of money while on this therapy, and their other medical care costs a lot of money. Either them directly, or their insurance corps which mark up the payout and charge the rest of us who haven't (yet) needed the drugs.
--
make install -not war
the tagging system needs to go.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I suppose the real issue is whether these drugs would have languished, never used, unless this company had proven them out (or had a big hand in it.)
So did it? Or is it an interloper trying to jam their foot in the way of already-developed, already-demonstrated drugs?
If it yanked, perhaps not into existence, but definitely into usefulness, these drugs via hundreds of millions of dollars in expenditure, then they should reap the profits.
The choice isn't between expensive and cheap drugs; that is a fraudulent concept. The choice is between expensive drugs and no drugs at all.
On the other hand, if they're just an interloper, then overturned patents is a good result.
Can we get any honest answers? Fraud [i]on either side[/i] (interloping, or losing patents to help people-in-the-moment) leads to more deaths in the long run, and that's what we must not have.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The original poster also forgets that the new drug still costs money to make, besides having to pay back the millions. There's not many new drugs today that cost less than $10 for a course to make today.
Still, I had a nasty thought: Drug company makes and sells the treatment to the patient that can afford the $100. Then turns around and donates the treatment to a non-profit that uses it to treat the guy who theoretically could only pay $10.
Then the company turns around and sticks a $100 tax deduction into their return for charitable donations, which actually saves them more money than what they would have gained by somehow selling the treatment to patient A for $100 and only extracting $10 from B.
I don't read AC A human right
Patents are one way of screwing people, but that's different.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Government agencies are often MORE efficient then the private sector.
Look at the books. Government projects hits their budget far more often then ANY private corporation.
No to mention the the USPS is the most efficient postal system in the world. More efficient then Fed-ex or UPS, and the USPS doesn't get a red penny from the Feds.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I've wondered for a while if there isn't a alternative middle ground. Could a government negotiate with a drug company to give up a patent in one area in exchange for an extension in another? Maybe trade more years on that boner pill patent for giving up rights on an AIDS drug? The government aims for the greatest good, while the company aims for the greatest profit, so it doesn't have to be a zero sum negotiation.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Most patents on AIDS drugs have already been,
in some sense, revoked in Brazil, on the ground
of "compulsory licenses" as sugested by
international patent agreements in situations
of public emergency.
Links I was able to find in English about AIDS
in Brazil (the first is very interesting, it
shows the history of how Brazil has been dealing
with AIDS since dictatorship times in the '80s
until today):
http://www.avert.org/aids-brazil.htm
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/aids/brazil
But if a particular drug isn't potentially profitable enough for a company to pay for the phase III trials, or it would greatly benefit the country (and the world) for it to be available cheaply, is that really a bad use of millions of tax dollars?
The government would probably need to work with a generic manufacturer (the lowest bidder) to produce enough for the trials, after which the patent would be publicly-owned and licensed to whoever will agree to make it cheaply - hydrochlorothiazide costs a few dollars for a year's supply, and I doubt they'd price it below cost. (Enough money is already wasted on marketing already, thank you.)
Not to mention that relying exclusively on industry research might end up costing more in the long run.
You COMPLETELY missed the point. I was not asking for examples of their use of the word "ethical", nor did my post in any way imply such.
You reading comprehension sucks.
I was asking for example of pharmaceutical companies "to distinguish themselves from generic pharmaceutical companies".
Read the wheel thread before you make a post that completely fails to address a point. You'll avoid looking like an idiot again (sadly, you couldn't do it this time).
You failed badly.
Heads up. In case no one noticed, a "non-final rejection" by the USPTO is several years from "revoked" assuming that the patentee is unable to argue around the objection. IMO, Doctors Without Borders failed to review the facts before writing a story based on PUBPAT's PR.
These patents have not been revoked; they are still under examination...
Or, you could donate to and help create more institutes such as OneWorld Health Then the cures that tax funded research creates, would have a non-profit outlet for development.
"Your analogy is in error. The US Postal Service does not receive any taxpayer money to operate"
Your entire statement is in error, the post office recieved 3 BILLION dollars in subsidies from the government in 2007. From YOUR link
"Capital contributions of U.S. government $ 3,034 (Dollars in millions audited)"
http://www.usps.com/history/anrpt07/highlights.htm
You are wrong.
If only we could figure out how HIV is spread, then we would be on our way to finding a cure.
I think the USPS does a fantastic job. How far can you send something for $0.41 via UPS or FedEx? With USPS I can send a letter all the way to Alaska or Hawaii for the change under my couch cushions. If you compare time & cost for a 1 pound package shipped domestically, USPS comes out ahead there too.
Nonsense! The USPS has a government-sanctioned monopoly and pays no taxes. Still, FedEx and UPS and DHL have taken 90% of overnight and related package shipping, and do it cheaper than USPS does (and with a smile, unlike the surly mail carriers). Logic suggests that they could do the same with first class mail as well. And if FedEx or UPS were going to every home every day, their pricing on packages would drop as well since they would be going there anyway.
I'm not saying the government does eveything well, but the Postal Service is one place where it excels. Many years ago, the USPS received taxpayer subsidies; but today the USPS is funded entirely by revenues from postage. If medical insurance or drug research was run half as efficiently as the USPS, we'd all be better off.
USPS not paying taxes like the hundreds of millions that FedEx does is an enormous subsidy. Not to mention that every mail carrier's health care - all 800,000 of them - is paid by the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program, subsidized enormously by the federal taxpayer.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
An example of a large medical product that the US government does efficiently is Medicare.
They have overhead that is about 1/3 that of private insurance...
Medicare is an iceberg that the USA is heading for, along with its smaller yet also dangerous sibling, Social Security. On our current course, in a few decades, all tax revenues taken by the US will be spent on entitlements for a very small percentage of the population. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the population does not rely on Medicare and Social Security for health care and retirement, and the sectors that are paying for the latter's private health care and retirement are doing great. Medicare and SS are horribly insolvent, versus a booming private sector. Which one is more efficient?
As Ravenshrike said, Medicare does not have to follow GAAP accounting rules, either in its own internal accounting, or in reimbursement. although the CBO has started keeping track of things that way just for the hell of it, and I can assure you that GAAP accounting does not show any such 1/3 advantage.
See: Real budget deficit: $4 trillion, an article about a problem scarier than the RIAA, the MPAA, Al Qaeda, and the ACLU combined.
But another huge reason Medicare is able to operate at the costs it does (remember, those costs are still going to bankrupt the USA and make US Treasury Bonds into junk bonds if something isn't done) is that the sheer size (and government-vested authority) of the program allows it to negotiate drug prices, and dictate reimbursement costs to doctors, something that can't be done in the private sector due to antitrust laws.
So you can't brag about something Medicare can do that would be illegal in the private sector, which includes accounting principles that would have any private corporation's accountants in supermax prison for a minimum of 20 years under Sarbanes-Oxley. It is ironic, indeed, that you are making the argument that Medicare, which essentially dictates the prices of drugs made by Big Pharma, is more efficient than the private system, in a thread about how capping the profits of Big Pharma is a bad thing - since such price controls would dry up the very investment that gave rise to said drugs - especially when such activities would be illegal if private health insurers tried it!
while the people that are on it rank it far higher than people rank their private insurance companies.
That which robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul. But Peter's grandkids are going to be really pissed when the real-world bills come due.
Medicare is a hopelessly doomed ponzi scheme that is going to ruin the US economy. Anyone who would use this program, of all programs, as some paragon of fiscal wisdom simply should stick to open source software debates, or wherever his real expertise may lie.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
And if the USA passed a law banning the export of drugs to any country with price controls - as it should to protect American workers and investors - those countries would either have to abandon said controls, or do without the drugs. If the price controls were abandoned, American drug prices would go down.
It is hypocritical indeed for a foreign country to let the American capitalist system develop the drugs at American investors' expense, then import those drugs with price controls, causing Americans to pay more for drugs, all the while criticizing the American system! As Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, " I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way." Speaking of which, Canada has a lot more money to spend on health care since the US essentially is subsidizing its lack of a real military.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Big pharma's average annual profit, after ALL expenses, is 30%. That's huge. The US big 3 automaker's profit is typically under 5%. Big Pharma spreads constant red herrings in the media to justify the expense when quite simply they market drugs heavily, have a huge demand, and have very little competition. All these lead to high prices.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Your analogy is in error. The US Postal Service does not receive any taxpayer money to operate. This link explains how the USPS operates.
The USPS's self-serving and misleading PR page notwithstanding, if you count the fact that the USPS pays no taxes, whereas FedEx and UPS and the like pay hundreds of millions in taxes, and the fact that the ~800,000 USPS employees have their health care paid for by the American taxpayer (which costs like a billion US$ each month!), that is one hugely-subsidized monopoly.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Any drug company which does charitable donations like you suggest goes out of business real quick.
That's why you choose your non-profit carefully to have income/wealth restrictions such that the rich customer can't just go to the charity.
That and you don't let the non-profit have an unlimited number of doses.
I don't read AC A human right
In fact, to get exactly the original problem, you proceed as follows: give all people who qualify for charity a virtual $100 (eg a voucher), then all people either can afford the $100, or are of type L.
Note also that when you put restrictions on charity, you create a secondary market where rich customers can buy from charity recipients at a lower price than $100.
This sort of thing actually happens, eg rich Americans buy their drugs in Canada. (the canadian health system isn't really charity, but the mechanism here roughly fits: drug company accepts to supply Canada at reduced prices, and Canada's market is not primarily intended for Americans, so it acts roughly as a restriction on the rich primary customers which belong to the American market).
Call those people who qualify for charity, but do not get a dose, type LL. You get back the original problem where people of type L and people of type LL together form the class of people who cannot afford treatment.Here's a way to kill all the birds with one stone - revoke the patent office. 99% of today's IP related lawsuits would disappear.
...if you will, but for potentially life-saving drugs a new licensing regime should exist: they should be cumpulsorily licensed under Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory licensing terms, including zero-cost licenses to parties who plan to sell the drug in a non-profit manner.
I believe currently, the end-consumer funds most drug research. Patents are used to enforce payments. With the new regime, new marketplace forces should end up providing R&D funding (patient organizations, trade secrets in the manufacturing process, etc). We cannot know for sure but it can't be worse than the current scenario for the short-to-medium term.
I'm all for free enterprise. However I put to you all that some things, like some medications, should be "open-sourced". Drugs to treat AIDS should fall into this category simply so that the worldwide AIDS problem can be controlled.
These days the main reason the FDA rejects anything is BECAUSE ...
IT WORKS and is good for you?
On that basis, xlnt news for many unfortunates.
OTOH: AIDS IS NOT A DISEASE. IT IS AN INDUSTRY.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/268.html
RR
Most of the drugs are developed by publicly funded research institutions. These patent the drugs, and then sell the patent to the drug companies. These then pay for safety studies, etc.
Vast majority of the drug companies expenses is NOT related to the drug research or safety or patent acquisitions. It is spent on advertising.
That's how the game is played.
http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/32662.html
Basic research is almost never conducted by big pharma. It is too risky. Not enough reward. Bringing drugs to market is not been the goal of publicly funded institutions because their goal is research and understanding, not marketing. This unfortunately gets us where we are today - a world where 99% of all antibiotics are manufactured for the agriculture industry. Where new antibiotics are NOT created because it pays more to create HBP or cholesterol pills. Where people die because some fat bastard is sitting on a drug that could save his/her life, but their life is just not worth it.
http://books.google.com/books?id=SKr5BDAmiMoC&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq=government+drug+developer&source=web&ots=eOUKOur6_z&sig=JDtDha7t3s3jpUd1joP8DhfppEQ#PPA257,M1
We need the government to step in and start to actually develop the drug and start competing with the big pharma. So far it is costing millions of lives in rare diseases and diseases in poor nations. Big pharma's perfect drug is not a cure - it is a life long dependency on their pills.
And I don't give a flying fsck if you want to call me a commie or not. Capitalism works for luxuries, but when your life is on the line, money is worth less than shit.
The USPS is a monopoly (you know, that which most people on /. hate about software companies?) on letter delivery, which they lose money on, BTW. Only through package delivery do they turn a "profit." Of course, unlike their competitors like FedEx who pay hundreds of millions, the USPS does not pay corporate income taxes, which is a huge hidden subsidy. Secondly, all 800,000 USPS employees have their health care under FEHB, under which the feds pay 72% of the premiums. That is in the billions of dollars per month of federal dollars.
Imagine if you will, FedEx paying no income tax and having the taxpayers paying for all of their employees healthcare. Think that would be a huge boost to FedEx's efficiency?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I never said the system is perfect. What makes my little scenario work, realistically, is that the people who can afford the high price vastly outnumber those that can't afford the treatment. Remember, being able to afford the treatment pretty much means 'has healthcare, a job, decent credit, or is on medicare or other welfare type system'.
Those that truly can't afford to pay the price are actually fairly rare, and the medical industry has managed to create a fair amount of price differentation.
At least in the USA, the type L and LLs are actually fairly rare. Given the tax benefits, you'd probably need to sell at least 6 treatments for every charity case for the deduction for the charity to help. Given price variations and such, you can accept that the occasional person doesn't get treatment(as no system is perfect), and that the occasional person who could pay doesn't(again, no system is perfect), since the selling at $100 and giving away bunches of free medicine for the deductions allows you to:
1. Get a bunch of goodwill for being 'nice'. (even though you're really a sociopath looking at the bottom line)
2. Charge more for the product, on average
3. Get a rebate even on the products you don't sell at full price
I don't read AC A human right
About half of the $800 million figure consists of "opportunity costs", the money that would have been made if the R&D funds had been invested in equities, in effect a presumed profit built in and compounded every year and then called a "cost." Drug companies then expect to make a profit on this compounded profit, as well as on their actual costs
And that accounting practice is richly justified (no pun intended). Once you accept that the private sector can do parts of the process that universities and government can't, you have to accept that market forces "should" be powerful enough to persuade these private sector people to do this in preference to some alternative.
In other words, their return must be higher than what the investors could get just from taking on the less-risky general stock market. And then, they have to be compensated for the risk that their profits won't actually be higher. So it makes perfect sense to use that as a baseline for judging the merit of a private investment in pharmaceuticals.
Second of all: any claims about rates of profits derived from looking at actually-existing pharmaceuticals will necessarily be higher than reality, because of the extreme survivorship bias issue. Those numbers will not account for all the ventures that started, and lost EVERYTHING, before a bigger one could buy their research, and even before they could get listed on an exchange.
Third: The $800 million figure is based on the small unrepresentative subsample of all new drugs.
It's true, as you mentioned, that some search methods get cheaper over time. But widen your scope. The *level of insight* necessary to get a new drug, and its non-obviousness, will still increase over time. The faster specialized searches simply mean insights derived from that kind of exhaustive search will be flushed out sooner. What to do afterward? Well, we need smarter people...
Finally, the real hole in all of the claims you have cited is: if you really know that pharmas make risk-adjusted superprofits, where are all the competitors coming in to steal all these profits?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
What was the antibiotic? The opposite is true for most drugs - the drugs branded for veterinary use are often several times the cost of those we use. For example, meloxicam (an NSAID) is available as a generic tablet in Canada and can be halved or quartered and given to a dog for about a tenth the price of the liquid that is meant to be used for canines. Some vets will call us to check what we have, since the price difference can be huge.