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India Launches Open Source Drug Discovery
sas-dot writes "India today launched a unique collaborative programme to discover drugs for infectious diseases common to the developing countries. The 'Open Source Drug Discovery' (OSDD) programme, launched by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), aims to build a consortium of global researchers and bypass the patent regime, which makes drugs expensive." Of course, all those pesky research, development and liability costs help, too.
Big Drugs all grip that RD form the bulk of their costs and that is why they have heavy mark-ups. But in the end, it is one of the lowest parts. In fact, they spend more money on lobbying FDA, white house, and congress than they do on RD.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, duh. My father gets such samples all the time, along with glossy brochures extolling their fantastic effects and why he should prescribe them to his patients.
And then if he does prescribe them to his patients, he starts them off with a free sample, right? And if the patient has no money, he gives them several free samples. As such, I think that free samples (as a cost) should simply appear as part of the production costs.
Tylenol used to advertise that it was the most used by hospitals. Why was that? Because it was the cheapest. They sold to hospitals much more cheaply than they sold to consumers. Should we count that discount as a promotion cost? They used it as a promotion.
The basic complaint is that drug companies spend too much on promotion and not enough on R&D. That that's why drugs are so expensive. Since free samples make drugs cheaper (in aggregate), I think that it is at the least disingenuous to count them as overspending in promotion. They are more a side effect of promotion IMO than a main component.
And if the patient has no money, he gives them several free samples.
If the patient has no money then they get virtually all costs back from our (Belgian) national healthcare system. Promotional samples don't even register as a blip on the radar when tackling healthcare challenges faced by "patients with no money". Trying to dress this up as some form of socially responsible charity is, as you like to say, disingenuous.
Since free samples make drugs cheaper (in aggregate)
Oh, please. Companies don't give stuff away to make things cheaper. That's all calculated into the price of the products they sell.
Obviously, medicins that are more successful (as in: more people buy them, not necessarily "more effective") may be sold cheaper than the rest since they can make the same profits in aggregate anyway. That's a general business principle, and marketing (including handing out free samples) may be one way to get there.
That does not mean that the best marketed product is also the best product though, nor that overall prices will be lower than if less money were spent on marketing by all parties involved and some other product got very popular for whatever reason.
The basic complaint is that drug companies spend too much on promotion and not enough on R&D.
No, the basic complaint is that drug companies always justify their needs for continuation patents, shaky lawsuits against generic medicin companies, high prices, patents on research largely performed by/in cooperation with public institutions, etc., by their huge R&D budgets. When it then turns out that they spend more on marketing than on R&D, I think it's logical that people are a bit miffed.
After all, they appear to need all that money more for marketing than for R&D. And if that's the case, overall healthcare quality may actually be better served with less exclusivity.
I think that it is at the least disingenuous to count them as overspending in promotion
Yes, it's clear you like the pharma industry a lot and want to discredit that study as much as possible, but I've seen more disingenuous hand waving and armchair economic reasoning from you in these two posts than in that entire study. For example, they cite three different, independently organised large scale studies, and are then accused by you of cherry picking numbers without you giving any counterexample whatsoever (not even a pharma-sponsored "white paper").
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