Slashdot Mirror
Indian Gov't Uses Special Powers To Slash Cancer Drug Price By 97%
suraj.sun sends this quote from the Times of India:
"In a landmark decision that could set a precedent on how life-saving drugs under patents can be made affordable, the government has allowed a domestic company, Natco Pharma, to manufacture a copycat version of Bayer's patented anti-cancer drug, Nexavar, bringing down its price by 97%. In the first-ever case of compulsory licensing approval, the Indian Patent Office on Monday cleared the application of Hyderabad's Natco Pharma to sell generic drug Nexavar, used for renal and liver cancer, at Rs 8,880 (around $175) for a 120-capsule pack for a month's therapy. Bayer offers it for over Rs 2.8 lakh (roughly $5,500) per 120 capsules. The order provides hope for patients who cannot afford these drugs. The approval paves the way for the launch of Natco's drug in the market, a company official told TOI, adding that it will pay a 6% royalty on net sales every quarter to Bayer."
The issue with compulsory licensing would get very muddy if Natco Pharma is allowed to export the medication outside of India's borders.
Vietnam Veteran / Former Postal Worker -- Use Caution When Taunting!
Since the public has decided they do not wish to pay more taxes to education, public funding has been getting slashed over and over. So we turn to the only place we can: Companies. They are willing to give money to fund research. However they own the results when they do that.
If you don't like that I'm afraid universities will need more public funding and that means higher taxes.
Mod parent up.
This is exactly what happened here:
"BAY 32-9006 was first developed by Onyx Pharmaceuticals. Onyx subsequently partnered with a large and well known drug company, Bayer (Bayer is the "BAY" in BAY 43-9006) to complete development of the drug."
-- http://cancerguide.org/rcc_bay43-9006.html
So this was developed by companies, not academia or the NIH.
Doing your due diligence in researching drugs is fine. Asking questions of your doctor after doing your reading is fine. Realizing that you had neglected to mention a potentially important detail is extremely valuable. I don't want to discount any of those, because they are very good things. But consumers are not meant to have any say over their prescriptions, and by that I mean that the choice of what prescription you're walking out of the doctor's office with at the end of the day should still be the doctor's and not yours (obviously you should still have the right to refuse and the right to seek a second opinion, of course).
Because of that, there's no good reason to be marketing to consumers, since the only thing you can be doing is indoctrinating an uninformed bunch of people who have no basis for understanding the complex interactions taking place and the results that might occur. For similar reasons, licensed engineers are barred from advertising in America by most of the major engineering associations. People have no basis for measuring the credibility of the claims being made, nor could they without years and years of training, so you'd be taking advantage of their cluelessness by addressing them directly.