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Indian Supreme Court Denies Novartis Cancer Drug Patent
beltsbear writes "Following a reasonable view of drug patents, the Indian courts have decided that making small changes to an existing patented drug are not worthy of a new patent. This ruling makes way for low cost Indian cancer drugs that will save lives. From the Article: 'Novartis lost a six-year legal battle after the court ruled that small changes and improvements to the drug Glivec did not amount to innovation deserving of a patent. The ruling opens the way for generic companies in India to manufacture and sell cheap copies of the drug in the developing world and has implications for HIV and other modern drugs too.'"
Now this is a good april fools joke - it's almost believable - until they come to the part about a reasonable court.
Well I imagine that if these small changes are not enough to get a new patent, then they are saying that this new variation of the old drug falls under the protection of the old drug.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Only a complete fool, April or otherwise, would base anything on imaginary property. There is nothing intellectual about that.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
A 30 day supply of 400mg tabs of Gleevec (imatinib sulfate) runs a lil over 6 thousand dollars. That's right, 6k a month to keep patients with CML, HES and certain stomach cancers alive. It's gone up over 2 thousand a month in the last 3 years alone.
If you have insurance, good insurance, you might pay around 50 bucks of that a month. Without insurance, you get to use prednisone til it or the cancer kills you.
Way to go pharmaceutical companies... and do you really think they are working on a cure when they can rake in thousands of dollars a month from each and every cancer patient??? Yeah right... think again... If they understand the cancer well enough to halt it in it's tracks for 90 to 95% of the patients that are treatable by this drug, and another 90 to 95 of those that take it are alive and in full remission 5+ years later, they certainly know enough to track down a cure if they were so inclined to do so.
Greedy bastards...
The only good patent is an expired patent.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Without the big investment by the pharmaceutical companies, new drugs would not have existed in the first place. It is a high-risk and high-reward business. However extorting dying patients is a bit morally questionable. But hey, we live in a society where everything can be measured by money.
Having said that, I think if the modification is small, and the investment into this new modification is small, then patent shouldn't be granted. I hope India doesn't end up with U.S's patenting culture, where the rounded corner on a phone can be patented.
This doesn't make sense to me. If they make a small change, the small change should be patentable -- but that should in no way effect the extent of the patent on the original formulation. In other words, patenting the small change shouldn't stop anybody from copying the original drug. And if the "small change" actually makes a real difference in effectiveness, isn't that an argument that it _should_ be patentable?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Can this combine with the "Doctrine of First Sale" case by the Supreme Court a few weeks ago about the textbooks bought in Thailand and sold in the USA? Then, instead of having USA-citizens buying cheap pharma-drugs from Canadian pharmacies, they could buy the cheap generic versions from Indian pharmacies.
:>)
Someone could start a business importing the generics from India and selling them here in the USA legally, rather than those generics being a "gray market" product: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_market (interestingly, the USA wikipedia uses the British spelling for grey, eh? How hoity-toity!)
Ok, the court did not think it was innovative enough, but I don't understand why this should affect the expiry of the patent of the previous version f the drug.
That should expire regardless, shouldn't it ?
If so, they could make generics from the previously expiring one.
There's something I don't understand about the evergreening of the patent. If someone can explain, thanks.
That's the correct spelling for grey to you, colonist.
Actually, Wikipedia doesn't have a USA version, it has an English version.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's a smart move, and I'm surprised that there aren't more governments catching on. If I can get cheap treatment in your country, it may even be cheaper to be treated there, including the plane ticket.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now, NOVARTIS will start making generics.
Generic drugs made by third parties are sorely needed by non G8 nations across the world. Indian companies are the leaders in making generics....like Chinese companies in making electronics / hardware. The argument of multinationals pharma companies like NOVARTIS claims the high cost of R & D for inventing new drugs for keeping up the high price. This has been debunked by the report on TIME (and many other sources) which proved the same drug or treatments costs vary highly depending on who pays. And such costs are amortized from G8 nations itself. Also none of these companies are making any losses in their balance sheet whatsoever...what they demand is permanent 'rent seeking'.
Today's TIME has an OPED by their Delhi correspondent with grave warnings on future of Indian pharma - the type of warnings issued by World Bank / IMF / West on Developing countries - basically on the lines on "do as I say, not as I do". I guess NOVARTIS marketing droids called TIME headquarters and asked them to run a sympathetic piece. We are talking about a company with $54 billion sales and $9 billion plus profit in 2012! Imagine their power. And now imagine the 'purported losses' on a few drugs going out of patent in developing countries - it will be negligible at best.
There is no way any Indian - except for the 2-3% of the elite - can afford a $2600 ~ Rs 130000 / - cost for a month long treatment. This is a country with no health social safety net other than public medical colleges and affordable primary health care facilities and medicines. (Private Health Insurance is a new phenomenon, slowly catching on, the advantages and disadvantages we know...we have to look at USA.)
The only argument which can be made against Indian generics - "if you can't afford the drug, why don't you suffer the consequences". I guess even the most hard nosed penny pinching corporate drone is not THAT heartless.
Instead of fighting the generic manufacturers, NOVARTIS should create their own special generic versions and beat them on a price point. But the suits running the show looked at some powerpoint and decided, lets first fight, if we lose start making generics.
Tat Tvam Asi
They seem to understand "My right to live trumps your supposed 'right' to make money" pretty damned well, though.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I hear you can make a really nice curry with expired patents.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The ROT13 and other April fools crap is over with. That was really annoying. Someone needs a stern talking to about what "obnoxious" means.
It's a smart move in the short term, in the long term, who knows? If this means less R&D spending on medicine, we might be worse off.
Until we have a better system in place for coming up with the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to prove the efficacy and safety of a new drug, drug patents are one of few cases where patents make sense.
"Evergreening"
This is a process where pharma companies make teeny weeny changes to compound and get a new patent, bypassing the 20 year limit on patents. Indian law(thankfully) does not allow "Evergreening". Patents cannot be issued on "new versions" or "slight changes".
The courts are very sensitive to this, and will not allow pharma companies to get away.
What this ruling has done is that many more common drugs can now be sold as generics. Cancer is a relatively rare disorder, but there are other more common diseases where patented drugs are very expensive.
With this ruling generics will get a big boost. Not only that, there is a push by the govt to prevent doctors from recommending "brands" and recommend generic brand name drugs which are 1/10 the cost, or even cheaper.
There has been lot of pressure by the WTO to allow corporate to plunder the masses, but the govt has held out on its own. There are many things wrong with India. Thankfully. patent system as it stands today is not one of the things wrong!
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Sorry, mate, we're the Revolutionaries in the former colony. Your King George lost the war. :>)
.
Damn you for being right about the "English" language, though. And you forgot to rub it in by using the word color with the Brit-spelling "colour". (jk. IAAA = i am an anglophile)
You're trying to talk sense to someone who thinks "American" is a language.
The word I'd normally use to describe such an exercise is, "futile".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
ibid.. That argument has been debunked a long time ago. Those millions aren't going where you think they are.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This is the BS line pharma companies would like to feed you. Much of the research happens in conjunction with universities.
Pharma companies are always in for a "maintenance" cure. They do not want the permanent cure. Corporations exist for profit, and if they get less profit, it will mean a 50,000$ car instead of a 1000000$ supercar.
But just like the MAFIAA they would like you to believe that they are some kind of angels looking over starving millions.
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From the article that you linked to "A grey market or gray market, also known as parallel market,..." - It seems that the English version of the page that you cite is quite clear that there are 2 ways of spelling the word. I am British and when I write on that site I write in English and point out alternative spelling just as this writer has. There is nothing wrong with the page that you link to.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It already is catching on. Lots of people already do 'medical tourism', in which they have to go to another country for a procedure or medicine that they either can't get or can't afford at home.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
People have been saying that the drug companies spend a lot of money on other things for a long time, but that isn't really relevant to my post.
Some of the money we spend on drugs today are used to test new drugs. If we are going to end the system we have today, I would prefer if we had a new system in place before that. So, what is your system for testing new drugs, and when can it be implemented? And remember, it really does cost hundreds of millions of dollars to be reasonably sure that a drug works and is safe, so your system had better be somewhat resistant towards corruption.
Greetings, across-the-ponder. I only said that it was "interesting", not that it was wrong. I assume that the Great Edit Wars of the '00s (the Twenty-O-O's) and the Great Revert Battles of Wikipedia of 2010 saw much churning both within the article and in the title itself. The skies must have been filled with the e's and the a's being catapulted back and forth as the Revolutionary Forces and the east-of-the-pond residuals of the once Mighty Empire hurled vowels and invective and inflections (and once, there was a stray umlaut as a German took part in a strange time-traveling-unterseeboot up-periscoping) at each other. It's been a lone holdout, that one wikipedia article entitled "Grey Market", that outpost holding onto that grey, grey spelling.
;>)
Birds do it, spelling bees do it, let's fall in . . . loove !
Delurking for the first time in a long time to say this: to the lowest hell with the people whose greed will let them watch other humans suffer, wither, and die for want of these drugs. "Evergreening" is scum and in a better world would be felonious.
We must have a change of heart as a race. We must ask, "is money for humankind, or is humankind for money?" Especially in a global economy full of floating currencies, money only has value while it has velocity, as one cannot see the wind but only feel its effects.
India has the potential to be a world leader in sustainability...or it may become a living nightmare zone with a population of billions. Only the decisions made deep in the hearts of those in power will tell, and the consequences will spiral out into eternity.
Patents on new drugs make sense. When these patents expire, the companies try to find some way to re-patent the drug. Too often, the change is from "take 2 25mg tablets twice a day" to "take 1 50mg tablet twice a day". In other words, the changes often really have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual active ingredient being delivered. Instead of capsules, the drug become a tablet; instead of a syrup it's now a capsule.
This case seems to be even more egregious, because Novartis did not even develop the original drug. Novartis patented their particular formulation, and hoped to use this to prevent anyone else from manufacturing competing formulations. They presumably purchased marketing rights from the drug developer, but I haven't been able to find the details. In any case, India's court has simply said that other companies can also produce the drug, and sell it in their own formulations.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
And remember, it really does cost hundreds of millions of dollars to be reasonably sure that a drug works and is safe, so your system had better be somewhat resistant towards corruption.
It is the current system that has issues with corruption, because the companies financing the testing have profit motives.
There is no magic to publicly funding non-profit research/testing. It would however seem like magic because it is safer and cheaper.
...it really does cost hundreds of millions of dollars...
Yes, because it's closed market. The regulations are designed to make it too expensive to compete. It is the epitome of 'crony capitalism'. And the whole process is done behind closed doors. That must end. However none of this is going to happen until we stop reelecting company politicians who appoint company bureaucrats. And furthermore, the efficacy and safety of many of today's pharmaceuticals are highly dubious. We can do much better if we demand some transparency at the very least. Make them open the books. There should be nothing to prevent the government from hiring scientists to create drugs also. Let's give these companies some real competition. Put our tax dollars to work for us for a change, instead of subsidizing the industry.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Who said that, exactly? Or did you just make that up? I think you did...
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"I would expect all of the other drug companies to also want a piece of that pie. That means they have to come up with something that works better."
If the motive is profit then a cure isn't a 'better' outcome. The better solution here is to reduce their patent protection till they *need* to push forward with research to survive. For patents to work, they need to be at the MINIMUM required for any market. Longer than the minimum and they slow development down.
"You are vastly, massively underestimating the complexity of cancer and of the human biology."
He's pretty much judged the drug company motivation right though, hasn't he? They have a monopoly, courtesy of patents, on their respective fields. In that case they have no incentive to push forward. If Novartis had to make a new better cancer drug every few years then the rate of development would increase enormously. Over zealous patent regimes are what's holding back drugs, Novartis can coast for quite a while now.
For Novartis, they'll make the next drug, and move it very slowly to market if their competitors come up with one. That way they can make full use of the patent length.
Is this akin to the "if we don't get unlimited copyright, the music will die"?
I highly doubt that this is going to make pharmacological research unprofitable. Maybe it will even lead to new medication when they can't milk the very same crap forever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It means R&D will be spend on NEW medicine. Much less will be spent on slightly improving existing medicine. You do know the R&D stands for research and design. They would have to do some NEW research.
Financially it makes much more sense to take your existing product, make it slightly stronger or last slightly longer and file for a new patent and basically double your patent length.
They'll still develop them, as they have a major captive market in the US.
The price of testing drugs is mostly due to the number of people in the tests, and the number of people determine how certain we can be on the estimates of efficacy and efficiency. You can get cheaper testing, or you can get better testing, but getting both is tricky.
That being said, more transparency would be nice. At least force them to publish all human testing of the drugs. Or even better, remove the testing from the drug companies, though it would be problematic to ensure that they have no power over it.
As for the using government money for testing drugs, it is an intriguing idea, but corruption would still be a problem, given the amount of money at stake. I am not sure whether it would be a larger or smaller problem than today.
And of course see the British spelling for other metals - sodum, potassum, et.c., and also the British spelling for a certain part of the head is cranum. Sheer arrogance.
Is this akin to the "if we don't get unlimited copyright, the music will die"?
If the price of making a track was hundreds of millions dollars and took five to ten years, yes. I guess it is akin to "without copyright, we would get no more blockbuster movies", with the difference that blockbuster movies does not keep people alive. Oh, and patents are for twenty years, not forever minus epsilon.
To disgrace the people of an entire nation based on evil ideas like patent shows from what background you are from and how civilized you are.
And only diseases relevant to Americans would get drugs, though I suppose that is fair, given that the Americans would be the ones to pay for it all.
Sure, but not the abuses of patents that we see now. If they want a new patent then develop a new drug. Don't just tweak the old one and demand a new monopoly on it.
Until we have a better system in place for coming up with the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to prove the efficacy and safety of a new drug
That's a recipe for stasis. If the requirement is a "better system" already implemented before we change the current system, then that day will never come. I'm not saying the current system should be totally junked tomorrow, but your requirements are impossibly high.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Correction: the price of testing drugs is mostly due to the bribes that need to be applied for them to be approved and the patents granted.
In my opinion drug development is one of the few things that should never be delegated to private companies.
How about this: Allow anyone to take an existing product (even one that is still under patent protection), make is slightly stronger or last slightly longer and allow them to file for a patent on the new product. The original patent owner would still have their patent but the owner of the improved-product patent is not encumbered in anyway by the still existing patent for the inferior=original patent. If minor changes indeed create a new patentable idea then it shouldn't matter who makes them. This would at least prevent the original patent owner from sitting on improvements until 1-day before his existing patent expires. First-to-file might be good for something after all.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
To hell with safety.
Allow life-saving drugs to be developed more quickly and cheaply, give them an "experimental" classification complete with a legal waiver. If I'm going to die of cancer in 2-3 years without medicine, do you think I give a shit about "safety"? There's no shortage of volunteers for these kinds of drug trials.
Now that developing drugs just got cheaper, more pharma startups can enter the market, and the number of years drug patents last for can be reduced.
Since doing this would benefit everybody except lobbyists, lawyers and politicians, there is of course no chance that it would ever happen.
I actually spit my coffee out at this! Please tell me this was late for April fool, quite possibly the funniest thing I've read this year!!
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
I have been unclear, then. I merely meant to warn against junking something that works when we don't know what we should put in its place. By all means let's test new systems, I see no reason why several systems for testing drugs couln't run simultaneously, just let's not completely dismantle the current system before we have something else that works.
interestingly, the USA wikipedia uses the British spelling for grey, eh? How hoity-toity!
Implication that there is a whole different wikipedia site catering for American spelling and grammar. Hilarious in itself.
Who said that, exactly? Or did you just make that up? I think you did...
Indirectly, I think they did
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
There are millions who cannot afford the exorbitant prices charged by large pharma companies. It is a fact that they will die or suffer a lot if they dont get these drugs. The right question is whether we want them to die or suffer. Pharma companies need to work out their financial and business plans by taking this question into consideration. They cannot ignore this question because they do not live in a perfect worlds.
The statement that this will kill innovation is wrong. Irrespective of the supreme court ruling in India...these millions are NOT going to buy the drugs at the exorbitant prices at which these large pharma companies sell simply because they don't have that kind of money. So this ruling does not impact their finance and hence their innovation in any way.
My understanding is that the bulk of the money is spent on marketing and sales.
And if I don't make stuff, I don't make money.
If that stuff is drugs, I can still make money, even if I don't get dibs on the patent for it. How much LESS money would Novartis make if they shut shop? Nil.
And, given drug companies spend more on marketing than r&d, they can AT LEAST halve their required payments to non-optional buyers.
In developing countries like India, a lot of people die much earlier due to lack of healthcare. Diseases like malaria, dengue, JE etc., are very common. Parasitic infections are also high on body count. Many for the want of cheap medicine which the developed world can take for granted.
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Big Pharma is a gigantic example of market failure. Easiest way to take care of this problem is to create a network of government/nonprofit drug design centres around the world, impose an R&D levy on all medication, and the contract out the manufacturing to the cheapest bidder.
It seems that most of the money the pharmaceutical industry earns goes to marketing, yes. But it still cost a lot to bring a drug to market. It is difficult to estimate how much the average is, but few estimates are under 100 million.
Only a complete fool, April or otherwise, would base anything on imaginary property. There is nothing intellectual about that.
All property is imaginary. Anything external to you can only be described as belonging to you because of the cultural and legal framework that defines property. Property is a matter of convention, not fact.
So intellectual property is no more or less foolish than any other kind of property.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Capitalism is only good for iPhones or other unnecessary luxuries, since I don't give a toss if Apple can persuade people to spend five hundred quid on a piece of electronic jewellery
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You do know the R&D stands for research and design.
Apart from the fact that it stands for research and development, you are quite correct.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Do you have a citation for that claim?
Here is a perfect system.
Drug companies would be treated like food and vitamin company. They would need to list the ingredients and amounts in the drug. If what they sold didn't match the label they would be liable for any damages. That's it. Just like peanut butter can be a great cheap source of nutrition for some and a deadly poison for others. As long as the company lets you know there are peanuts in there it's up to you to eat it.
So no regulations required to prove a drug is safe or effective.
Get rid of patents. A company will make money by being first to market. Without the regulations and liability they can make much smaller and faster innovations.
The FDA would act like a consumer advocacy agency. They can fund and run studies and maintain a list in what drugs are good for what and what side effects have been reported. It would be up to the doctor, pharmacist, and ultimately patient to decide what to take.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
If you don't mind a lot of people getting hurt because science is hard to understand, and it is hard to understand that it is hard to understand, that system could work. I do care that people get hurt, even if it is by their own lack of insight into science, partly because I know there are areas I do not know enough about to make judgments in, or even to recognize experts. And probably some that I don't know I don't know enough about.
So intellectual property is no more or less foolish than any other kind of property.
The thing that is owned in "intellectual property" is not well defined. That's a pretty big difference to real property. The concept of intellectual property is not even wrong. Calling each other foolish won't change that.
You do know the R&D stands for research and design.
R&D usually means research and development. Even with publicly funded research, there are still millions that need to be spent on developing reliable mass production of the chemical.
Lilly estimated it cost them a billion to bring a new drug to market, and that was years ago. I think they were talking about drugs for major diseases. First, they have to find a promising compound, that isn't easy. Most compounds they try are worthless. They get some help from biologicals, but it only the first step. They must figure out how to synthesize it because there are not enough green plants to do the job. There are trials, and your drug can get dinged from any of these. The FDA in the U.S. requires at least a semi-trailer full of documentation on your drug (it is probably more now). And your drug must compete against all the other drugs for the same ailment. And once your drug goes generic, there goes your revenue stream because generic drug companies do not support research.
That's completely unhelpful. Drug companies put new drugs through tests to establish information that is useful to doctors when they need to prescribe something to treat a condition. If you take that information base away from doctors, they can not effectively prescribe.
There is already a problem with missing information (See: Dr. Ben Goldacre for more on this subject), we need to provide more data to doctors, not less.
So are you going to link to where this has been genuinely debunked? All I see is a link to your opinion.
So the solution is to have FDA foot the bill of running all the studies, and hoping that the consumers pay more attention to FDA's info over advertising claims? +1 Funny
"\People motivated to find cures (become famous, tenure at a major university..."
I think you'll find money is the motivation there too. People don't spend a fortune going through Uni to be famous, they do so for money.
Novartis owns their inventions and controls the spending on which ones, and the rate it pushes each to market.
Novartis maximizes profits, because that's what companies do.
The patent system is such that they don't have to compete with themselves, if a research department comes up with a cure for cancer, they don't need to push that to market because it would damage their current product line.
The fix for that is to force shorter patents, the companies profit margin will be squeeze and it will become like the rest of industry, a competitive treadmill, exactly as markets are supposed to be. Patents currently are way too long and distort that treadmill.
"and do you really think they are working on a cure when they can rake in thousands of dollars a month from each and every cancer patient??? Yeah right... think again... If they understand the cancer well enough to halt it in it's tracks for 90 to 95% of the patients that are treatable by this drug, and another 90 to 95 of those that take it are alive and in full remission 5+ years later, they certainly know enough to track down a cure if they were so inclined to do so."
A post has on Slashdot been moderated +5 Informative containing an explicit and unambiguous assertion that the pharmaceutical industry would be able to cure cancer completely if they wanted to do so, but they don't want to do so because they would make less money from it. +5 Informative is the highest score that can be given to a post.
Democracy has been failing a lot in in the more recent years and I'm not sure what to do about it.
Correction: the price of testing drugs is mostly due to the bribes that need to be applied for them to be approved and the patents granted.
About the closest thing to a bribe you'll see in first-world drug development is the payments to the doctors who participate in the clinical trials. That is actually a considerable part of the trial costs. The payment can't induce them to manipulate the trial results, since the doctors don't have the ability to do this (the trials are double-blind - if they lied and said the patient was doing better than they actually were it would just affect the placebo group as much). However, if you don't throw money at doctors they won't bother to tell their patients about the option of participating in the trial.
Unfortunately, sometimes the money does cause doctors to enroll patients for whom the trials are inappropriate. Companies actually try to stop this, because it is likely to result in a drug NOT being approved (if you give a pill to somebody who is not expected to benefit from it, you add noise to the data which is already quite noisy).
So, while lots of money in the pharma industry gets spent on lots of stuff, the fact remains that it does cost hundreds of millions of dollars to test drug candidates, and most of the time the testing demonstrates that the drug is not safe/effective.
Oh, I'm all for having the NIH competitively do drug development/testing/etc (and making the resulting drugs freely licensable within the US, for use in 3rd world countries, and in 1st world countries that make similar investments and reciprocate). However, I don't think that it will magically make the testing less expensive, unless the whole healthcare system changes so that doctors can be compelled to participate in trials without much additional compensation (that is something that would be more likely to work in a country with nationalized healthcare, though it is worth pointing out that clinical trials tend to happen on a global scale anyway).
In the drug industry the patent system is in part used to let the high-risk/high-cost of development pay for itself. A tweaked molecule might not be very innovative, but it is just as expensive to test. If rulings like this prevail then you simply won't see tweaked molecules developed using private money, even if the resulting drug is a substantial improvement for patients. Again, there are other ways to fund drug development, but I'd like to see those methods employed and demonstrated as successful before we just pull the plug on the drug industry. There is no reason that publicly funded efforts can't just compete with the private ones - the public drugs would be much cheaper for consumers so they'll have no trouble if the R&D labs manage to come up with the goods. The pharma industry has been laying off so many scientists of late that the NIH shouldn't have trouble hiring some...
I don't think that running parallel systems would work so well. The problem with the current system is that it gives patent holders too much control. Given a choice, they aren't going to voluntarily opt for another system that reduces their level of control.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
USA Wikipedia does exist !! http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
The FDA has a budget of around $4B with $2B from fees paid by drug manufacturers.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Of course the drug companies would still do the studies and provide information to the doctors as a marketing tool. But also all of the disease organizations like American Diabetes Association would pay for or run their own studies to help their members decide what works.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
There are plenty of supplements, traditional remedies, and herbs that are regulated this way. There is potential for harm and yet somehow people manage.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It depends on how you count failures.
If you ask me "how much does it cost to find out if this molecule is a good drug?" the answer would probably be around $1M - $100M. Most of the time relatively-inexpensive screening would figure out that it won't work. Other times it would require trials that would be aborted at various points in time, costing up to $100M.
If you ask me "how much was spent just on testing that one drug that was approved last week?" the answer would probably be around $100M. Successful drugs consume the upper limit of the testing costs since they need to go through the full gamut of testing to be approved.
If you ask me "what is the total R&D budget of a typical pharma company over 5 years divided by the number of approved drugs they've had in that period of time?" the answer would be in the billions. The reason for this is that most drugs turn out not to work, so before you can spend the $100M on the drug that works you first have to spend $100M on lots of molecules that don't work.
It really isn't hard to see for yourself. Most drug companies publicize their annual R&D investments (which don't go to stuff like marketing). They certainly publicize drug approvals. Just pick a company and do the math, but makes sure you count actual new drugs, and not just new indications (which are somewhat cheaper to come up with, and certainly lower risk).
Companies do spend more on marketing than research, but the research costs are still astronomical. There are other models, and I'm all for trying some out, but it would make sense to get a new drug discovery model working before simply dismantling the one we already have.
It means R&D will be spend on NEW medicine. Much less will be spent on slightly improving existing medicine. You do know the R&D stands for research and design. They would have to do some NEW research.
Financially it makes much more sense to take your existing product, make it slightly stronger or last slightly longer and file for a new patent and basically double your patent length.
Yes and no. The patent on the original drug STILL runs out. So, anybody can make the drug that they could have made even if the new drug weren't developed. The only thing that gets patent protection is the tweaked molecule - there is no extension for the original one.
I think the only thing that should matter to patients is whether the new drug is worth it. If it isn't, then don't buy it - just buy the old drug, which would be unpatented and cheap. If it is worth it, then do buy it. If you allow tweaked molecules to be patented then patients get that choice. If you don't allow those patents, then the tweaked molecule will never be developed in the first place, and patients will have no choice but to take the old drug.
That's why I don't have a problem with the whole "me too" drug thing even though it seems like everybody hates it. If the "me too" drug wasn't useful nobody would be taking it - the original drug still has its patent expire when it would otherwise expire. I've known people with drug sensitivity issues and having more options available lets them and their doctors find the option that works best for them. Drugs are approved based on the results of the "average patient" but the fact is that no patient is actually an "average patient."
They seem to understand "My right to live trumps your supposed 'right' to make money" pretty damned well, though.
That's kill the goose that laid the golden gate logic. The new drug wouldn't have been tested if the company had known it couldn't be patented in advance. They would only have had the option of using the old drug - an option they would still have had if they had ruled differently (the patent for new drug A2 does not extend the patent on related drug A1).
I do agree that the way we fund drug development is highly regressive. I'm all for public R&D going to license-free drugs. However, don't think that it will somehow magically make the drugs cheaper - it will only change who pays for them.
American is probably already a language. It's really a matter of debate as to when exactly to call it a new language. But, it will happen, if it hasn't already. By your reasoning, Dutch and Afrikaans don't exist because they'd both be German.
Considering that American English is the dominant form of English, that's the correct way of doing it. It's more likely for random people to know American English idiosyncrasies than British English ones. And what's more, American English is somewhat easier to learn than British English as we've fixed a lot of the weirdness with British English.
accept only 5% of all that money is related to research, the rest is marketing and lawyers and over paid management. Most of the money for drug research comes from the public purse and the average US citizen is getting royally screwed by the drug companies for drug research they paid for already.
you do realise drug companies can write of the research and testing period expenditure in many western countries, in many cases the write off exceeds 100% of the investment.
Positive paradigm shifts in the corporate world a boon to humanity.
Positive paradigm shifts in the corporate world positively impacts immensely the quality of both the environment and human life.
This has been visible in the past four decades at least in two areas mentioned below.
1] Modern concept of corporate social responsibility either done voluntarily or enforced by the state is a good thing and that is being followed mostly by big MNCs and all other big and responsible business enterprises.
2] Similarly there is a mounting awareness as well as activist induced concerns towards the welfare of the environment.
Slowly but steadily on these two areas there have been a marked improvements in the past three decades compared to total lack of concern for such things prior to that.
In fact in many parts of the world where the government failed it was the responsible and generous sponsorship of corporate houses that have helped many human beings get basic health care, education and other fundamental human needs.
But having deservingly praised the corporate world for its positive contribution in these areas, there is a major unfulfilled area of concern and if only the collective wisdom of the corporate world can pledge to get the complaints in that area too addressed positively in the interests of human race at large then history will remember such corporate houses and human race would be always grateful for such activities.
I shall come to what it is but before that I would like to make an appeal that this has to be addressed purely in the interests of human race at large and not commercial considerations or legal rights and wrongs. This can be debated and as history has shown many instances where the common good of human race prevailed over all other considerations be it the consideration of interests of a specific nation or a specific profession or specific ideology etc
What I am talking about is doing away with Intellectual Property rights and its off springs Patents, Copy Rights, Trade mark, Trade Secrets to name a few.
Fortunately the UN day of Intellectual Property Rights too falls in the near future on 26th April 2013. So we can start the debate. Please try to go through the entire article for the sake of Humanity.
If this happens then probably we would be rewriting the history of world economy.
I am not a lawyer. What I am going to write may sound high flown philosophical and idealistic but practically not viable. However, that does not stop me from putting forth certain questions that have been bothering me for a very long time regarding the very legitimacy of Intellectual Property Rights and its off springs Patents, Copy Rights, Trade mark, Trade Secrets to name a few.
In evolutionary biology we find that all creations have shed the unnecessary parts or shrunk them for better survival; in evolutionary sociology too human race has shed too many models of social groups and narrowed down on a few that would be easier for global interaction; in languages too, from a few thousands languages that existed humanity has reduced the number to just a few hundred languages. Similarly there is nothing wrong in giving up in the interest of evolution of human race, of course against the interest of a few lawyers who mostly benefit from such laws, we can think of doing away with this whole set of laws connected with Intellectual property.
What is Intellectual property (IP)? It basically refers to creations of the mind. Who is the owner of anyone’s mind? Mind [ a difficult term to define] like everything else in life is a product of evolution and in its course of evolution it is inevitably interdependent and interacts with all other minds either obviously or otherwise, with itself at varying levels of potency based on different levels of perceiving and performing capacities at different times. Besides whether we believe in it or not, it is always aided by a universal mind which works through every individual mind at various frequencies depending upon various factors like readin
Drug R&D is so risky. I do favor government on certain things but not drug research. It's a huge endeavor -- to the tune of $1B/drug. http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-truly-staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs/
Good to see that the reason is properly highlight, i.e, small modification to original drug did not qualify as a new innovation. There are some news sites i visited, where it is incorrectly implied that the verdict denied patent to a completely new medicine.
I am completely against all patents and copyrights.
However as long as patents and copyrights exist, I am for making everybody as aware of them as possible, so I would be that "hard nosed penny pinching corporate drone" in your estimation then, saying: fuck them, they want to support governments that create the monopolies in the market by issuing patents, then let them suffer the consequences.
India is doing the right thing in 1 instance, while doing the wrong thing in all the other instances of patents and copyrights, they should completely abolish the idea of government protection to any monopoly, regardless if they are an inventor or copyright holder, it's irrelevant.
There should be one way in the free market to keep your secrets: keep your secrets. Don't disclose any information about the process, the details of manufacturing, etc., keep your secret that way, not with gov't creating an unnatural advantage by law. Trade secrets and being first to market, that's all you would have in a free market.
BUT governments also shouldn't be forcing companies to spend extraordinary amounts of money artificially to come to market to comply with nonsensical shit that FDA forces companies to comply with, which only allows the biggest companies to put forward new drugs and procedures because it takes hundreds of millions of dollars and years to comply with all the nonsense (beyond the general testing for harm that could be done by the drugs), I am talking about "evidence of effectiveness".
One thing is to show that a drug is safe or at least list its side effects, the other thing is to have an expensive and prolonged study of effectiveness, where in reality the market would be doing it much faster and with no expense to the company, but allowing it to bring the medication to the market quickly and much cheaper.
You can't handle the truth.
But if you nationalize so many industries they might not be as profitable and then they couldn't pay as many people high salaries and those people would not have enough disposable income to buy iPhones and data contracts. Please before you make any drastic changes, think of the poor iPhones - they need owners to care for them. Think of the baby iPhones who will never taste the sweet sweet data from the cloud.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
accept only 5% of all that money is related to research
Do you have a citation for that number?
Most of the money for drug research comes from the public purse and the average US citizen is getting royally screwed by the drug companies for drug research they paid for already.
I assume you have been misled by the difference between "X looks like a great disease target" and "We now have an FDA-approved drug targeting X", and would like to suggest "In the pipeline" :
This is going to come across as nastier than I intend it to, but my first response is that the taxpayer's return on this was that they got a new drug where there wasn't one before. And via the NIH-funded discoveries, the taxpayers stimulated Pfizer (and many other companies) to spend huge amounts of money and effort to turn the original discoveries [...] into real therapies. I value knowledge greatly, but no human suffering whatsoever was relieved by the knowledge alone that JAK3 appeared to play a role in inflammation. What was there was the potential to affect the lives of patients, and that potential was realized by Pfizer spending its own money.
Would new drugs be required to wait for the FDA to complete testing before being released? The FDA has barely enough funding to review studies the pharmaceutical companies produce, where would the extra money come from for it to do testing? If pharmaceutical companies are freed from the need to test would they flood the marketplace with so many new products that the FDA couldn't keep up? If the FDA's testing program can't keep up with the number of new drugs being introduced by drug companies, who sets the priorities of what's to be tested?
Well, taxpayers are paying the money, just in the form of drug prices.
Both models have their advantages. I'd like to see some Government drug R&D (end-to-end, royalty-free) if for no reason other than seeing for sure if it works. If you spend a few billion dollars on R&D in a fairly open manner something good is likely to come of it at least in terms of spin-offs, and when you compare that to stuff like bombing Arabs it seems like a decent investment.
If it doesn't work out then we can stop arguing about getting rid of the Pharma industry. If it does work out, we won't have to get rid of the Pharma industry as it will be obsolete on its own (if the NIH is coming out with 10 cent pills left and right there won't be a market for $5 ones). Most likely we'll find that each model has advantages and disadvantages, and more drugs will be cheap but some will still be expensive. Along the way both the private and public R&D models are likely to improve from the competition. Consumers win.
What I don't like is the whole "let's just get rid of patents" business. That might be the de facto end result of a government takeover of R&D, but let's start by building the new R&D model before we just sledgehammer the old one. Considering we can't even afford to send a few guys to space any longer it seems like Congress is going to take a while to approve some $100B/yr expansion of federal drug research. Let's start small with some experiments and see how it goes.
No, of course not. For YOUR safety, the USA federal government MUST make it illegal to re-import prescription drugs and medical devices!
How anyone can believe that people in Washington DC have a desire to make healthcare "affordable" is beyond me.
http://taxation.lawyers.com/income-tax/Tax-Deductions-for-Research-and-Experimental-Costs.html
R&D is a deductible expense when working on a product. Pharma works on products and rarely does any basic research.
So the costs are already accounted for.
The trials and testing are not accounted for as deductible expenses however.
A plan would need to a) make tests tax deductible or b) reduce the costs of testing / quality control.
I would argue that without accurate trial data to prove that the Pharma product is a viable product it would never go to market and therefore should be considered research on the product, fully deductible. If that is the case then we're all getting screwed twice and something should be done to fix that. If not then making it deductible in a sane way to reduce costs in the market would make sense.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Perhaps. But your right to live does not require me to spend my time (my life) to make your life better, longer, or even possible.
Goverment should do research and make the formula publicly available so no more patents are offered on life saving drugs. --I am not a socialist
The simple and obvious answer is to nationalise the drugs companies, just as water, electricity, internet supply, banks, farms and other similar activities should be nationalised.
So how long should this Great Leap Forward take? 5 years?
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
You know what's even more simple and obvious -- make everything free, including unnecessary luxuries, and just rely on everyone's good nature to make the system work.
It's so simple and obvious I can't believe nobody has tried that before.
Do you have a citation for that? That patently untrue. The simple fact is drug companies spend more on advertising than on R&D. Once drug companies were allowed to advertise - yes they were prevented from doing so - their marketing budget sky rocketed.
AND FYI the GAO did a study on patents and pharmaceuticals and found that they did not encourage innovation and break through drugs. Allergy medications seem to be the only "innovative" drugs they are able to make. Patents drove up costs and did not drive innovation.
Google it yourself. SEC filings should help.
You possess very little knowledge on how basic research works. None of these drugs are developed in a vacuum. They are all based on work that has been done before and has been published in journals. Federal tax dollars also go towards drug development. So again, tax payers are paying for alot of this development.
Revenue stream? After a 15 year patent? Yeah they're crying all the way to the bank.
Agreed, especially the part about the government scientists. If we weren't currently in such a "limit the government" mode, NIH - or some similar entity - could get the ball rolling. Just as DOD and NASA laid the groundwork for some now-commerical enterprises (anything Internet-related, GPS, private space exploration), NIH could do the same for drugs and medical devices. Granted, the government is not always as cost-effective as it should be, but in this case, what would be lost, given how expensive the industry is anyway?
...your tax dollars hard at work....
I wouldn't nationalize them. But I would have the government kick-start the effort, as they have in other areas (Internet, GPS, space exploration) and then let the "free" market do its thing.
Commie!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
For a while, some insurance companies were doing this for big ticket treatments. They would offer financial incentives for patients to go abroad to get treated. I think state lawmakers started restricting that, at the request of citizens of employers. In the anecdotes I read, the patients were going to India. I wouldn't want to have to endure extended travel to return home, especially since, in my view, a lot of the savings would end up going in the insurance executives' pockets.
Unfortunately, that's how much of the market is today, anyway.
Yeah, because that worked so well. USSR was at the forefront of all innovation in medicine... oh, except they weren't.
What does the amount spend on marketing have to do with the price of testing drugs? I am aware of the fact that they spend a lot on marketing, and that it isn't doing anything good, but I never said anything about their total income, only about the price of testing drugs.
Do you have a link to the study you mention? I would like to read it.
None of these drugs are developed in a vacuum. They are all based on work that has been done before and has been published in journals. Federal tax dollars also go towards drug development. So again, tax payers are paying for alot of this development.
The hard part isn't finding the target, the hard part is making 100.000 molecules that might be useful and test them in vitro, taking the 5.000 that works and testing them in mice, taking the 100 that works and test their toxicity and uptake in healthy humans, taking the 5 that aren't toxic and are taken up on diseased humans, testing the 2 that works in even more diseased humans, and testing the 1 that doesn't have a nasty, but rare side effect in even more humans, finding out it doesn't work as well as the existing drug, dump it all and start over, until one drug comes out.
By DRE, I would estimate the basic research per drug to cost 10 to 30 millions, going from there to the approved drug costs around 1 billion per approved drug. So yes, tax payers might be paying SEVERAL PERCENT of the research leading to a drug.
Actually, that isn't fair. Finding the target is hard. Going from there to the approved drug is the EXPENSIVE part.
A blow to Big Pharma. Keep them coming.
Except that is what they do. The scientists do some base trials so they know they're not giving you something that's stupidly toxic, then they sign up enough people who are similar enough in symptoms that the results can actually be analyzed, then they give them to you and hope you don't die. If the drug is awesomely good, they end the trial early and give it to more people.
If you just give people drugs randomly, cost doesn't go down. All that happens is that you stop being able to track how effective the drug candidates are, and have lots of people dead from drinking toxic snake oil.
This post could very well be called the Sociopath's Creed.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
needs to be nationalized and subsidized heavily for the greater good of those in need. People need to get to the point where the idea of medicine and profit as bedfellows needs to end. For-profit medicine was and never will be a good idea. The ability (or inability) of someone to pay for their medical needs should not be a factor in the quality of care they receive.
Things that I feel should be heavily subsidized and/or nationalized for the greater good:
- Gasoline/diesel
- All medications
- All medical treatments
Pharm companies should be non-profit. Pay their people reasonable base salaries and any money made over gets put into R&D, not bonuses or high salaries. Same for oil companies, hospitals. Too many people in the word are actually overpaid for what they actually do.
It's time to put people before profit. Want to be a doctor? Do it for love of helping others, not the overpaid income. The government could run the medical schools and the doctors could emerge debt free and work for a single-payer system making a fair wage and everyone gets fair medical treatment at no cost beyond a slight rise in taxes. Even with a high tax, the tax cost to a person is FFFFFAAAAAARRRRR less than that of bankruptcy from treatments they get jammed for under the capitalist medical system.
The definition of "real" property is not exactly carved in granite, either.
For example: assume I own a parcel of land. Does that mean I own everything beneath it, all the way down to the center of the earth? Does that mean I own all the airspace above it, all the way to the top of the earth's atmosphere? Clearly no, yet in general I do have the right to prevent someone from flying a remote-controlled drone directly above my rooftop, and I do have the right to prevent companies from extracting minerals below my land without my permission. I do have some rights above and below my parcel of land, but the limits of those rights must be determined by law and by the agreement of society in general.
And let's take it another step: assume I decide to rent out my property to someone else. He pays me rent, which I use to buy more property, and rent it out to more people. Eventually I am able to sit back and do nothing except collect rent from my property in perpetuity. I can even hire someone to manage my property for me, and do nothing but collect monthly checks and goof off.
But wait - I am now expecting a perpetual income from my property without working for it, based on my one-time purchase of that property. Clearly, this is a grave injustice against society, or so the "I don't believe in imaginary property" Slashdot meme goes. Yet would those same Slashdotters claim that one does not have to right to rent or lease one's own physical property? The fundamental concept of licensing a patent is exactly the same as that of renting one's land. So why is one bad, but the other okay?
You want to reject the entire concept of intellectual property because it is not precisely defined, but the ownership of real property is no more precise. The entire concept of "property" is hazy around the edges, because it is a societal construct in every respect. As the parent put it, "all property is imaginary".
R&D is an expense. If the company buys a new Learjet it is tax-deductible, simply because it is an expense. Companies are taxed on profits.
I'm not sure how this really matters though. So, maybe R&D is tax-deductible, and maybe it isn't. I don't think a company cares that much whether it can save $100M in taxes before spending $1B in R&D. They care far more if they can charge $5/pill so that they can recoup the expenditure.
It isn't like making something tax deductible will magically make it economically feasible. If a company donated all of its money to a 501c3 organization it would be completely tax-deductible, and any company that did that would immediately go bankrupt just the same. Companies spend money to make money. Taxes might steer spending a little if a company is faced with similar options (do I build my plant in North Carolina or South Carolina?). They aren't going to cause a company to do something that has no hope of a return...
This kind of High risk, high cost endeavor is better served if sustained by public money and result in public domain results. Making drug development a business was a bad idea in the start and keep getting a worse idea as time goes, especially in our current mixed system, where a lot of public money is injected in the research and the results are still patented to private companies.
I don't get it, why isn't the change the only thing being patented? I don't understand how you can re-patent something. "Re-patent" is the issue.
1) Patent something
2) Patent expires
3) Make small change
4) Patent "new drug" (previous drug with small change)
5) Previous drug should no longer be patented while "new drug" is now patented. Right?
Both the previous drug and the "new drug" should exist as separate things and have different legal protection, shouldn't they?
Personally I agree.
However, I'd like to see the NIH funded to do the work and see that process demonstrated as cost-effective/etc before we just kill patents.
If you kill drug patents then companies will axe their R&D almost overnight. They'll milk their existing product line, maybe diversify into generics or other industries, but you'll quickly find any expert who knows anything about how to drug development dedicated to other tasks or finding new work. That is a LOT of lost knowledge, and a decade from that decision there will be a lot of people not being treated for things that could otherwise be treatable. Sure, we'll save money on pills, but you can save even more money if you just let people die in the streets - saving money isn't the main purpose of a healthcare system.
I'd rather see the government operate competitively, and let it make industry gradually obsolete if it becomes successful. That keeps scientists working on drugs, and allows a gradual transition. If the libertarians are right and the government can't do anything right, then that will become evident and the superior private industry won't be impacted at all.
But, I agree, I think that this sort of thing is potentially well-suited to government R&D.
The one exception would be around high-value products (to the consumer) that are politically vulnerable. Think of Viagra. Could you have seen that getting lots of federal dollars? The advantage of private industry is that it lets the consumer pay for the product if they want to buy it. And, there is no reason that this wouldn't continue in certain niches - we could still keep the patent regime, and competition would naturally limit it to areas that for whatever reason the government underserves. Instead of arguing over whether the world needs Viagra we can let those who want it pay for it, and taxpayers don't have to.
And the original patent term should be more than adequate for that! Making minor adjustments to an existing patented drug, like "time release" for instance in order to justify a new patent is an old shell game for the drug companies.
"First, they'd have competition within months of introducing the new drugs"
If it were that easy to make, was it really worth a patent?
"but Novartis couldn't reduce prices to the same level while remaining profitable because of costs incurred during development"
So they won't produce Cold Remedy. Cold Remedy Plus. Then Cold Remedy Flu and Colds. Then Cold Remedy Extra Strong. Then...
This also presumes that only Novartis does R&D. They don't. So Novartis could take someone else's product and sell that and use it to subsidise the R&D that produces cures nobody else has cures for (and makes them a Non-Generic brand).
"They're specialists in development"
Of the "lets tweak it a bit" school.
MBA 101: Most money is spent on marketing and sales in all companies of any significant size. This is not specific to pharmaceutical companies. Engineering/Research is usually 3rd place.
There is a reason for this, and that reason is not corruption. Consider some local indie band you have never heard of until years after they got started, despite their quality. They're much, much better the crap on the radio, but their quality has no ability to shine through because there's only so many people who can see them in that dive bar they play in. That's sales and marketing's job, and it costs a lot because there is only so much attention that a person can give to various messages. So, you're always in a arms race.
And before you think that only the evil private sector indulges in this, many political campaigns are now spending millions and even billions for the same sort of exposure by upping their PR game and even hiring Big Data companies to get them the best results possible.
That drug you have heard of and you want to be generic? Unless you are tracking medical journals and drug trials, you heard of it because of some pharmaceutical company's sales and marketing efforts.
Not saying I like that all that money is spent on that sort of thing, but there is a very good reason for it.
USA english is the second most spoken version of English.
Companies should not be allowed to make profits out of basic human necessities.
On the contrary, profits in and of themselves are not a problem. Exclusivity is. Companies should not be allowed to monopolize. That is what the government is currently protecting, and that is wrong. However, nothing is going to change while the voters sheepishly vote for mass media spoon fed candidates. So, we're kind of stuck.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Oh, and patents are for twenty years, not forever minus epsilon.
And that is in fact a key factor in the ruling: the patent _does_ end in 20 years, rather than 20 + 20 because we used a levorotatory protein + 20 because we added this binding agent that releases more smoothly over time + 20 because we adjusted the gel coating to resist acid better and deliver more of the drug to the intestines + 20 because...
Globalization is zero-sum.
Hence it's prudent for nations to amend their constitutions/laws/rules/regulations/policies accordingly.
Casteism
I misread the title as "Indian Supreme Court denies Novaris Cancer Drug to Patient." Much better upon reading the TFS.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Their health service was far superior to the US health service. Not being exceedingly rich, I would rather have what they have now to what poor people in the US get. The American people just fought really hard to stop the idea of real health care so that a few rich people could maintain their lifestyle.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
However none of this is going to happen until we stop reelecting company politicians who appoint company bureaucrats
Can you list the company politicians currently in office? Who is the worst? What district? What kind of election opposition do they have?
We're not going to stop re-electing "company politicians" until it begins to be widespread public knowledge which politicians are the worst offenders, and then the time to get them out of office is the primary. (Amost) nobody votes in congressional primaries, and by so doing we are abdicating our responsibility to get these people out of office.
A simple high-profile campaign to defeat a "bought and paid for" politician (say, Lamar Smith, author of SOPA?) in the primary--with funding, planning, and Net-wide effort (similar to the level of effort used to defeat SOPA) would signal a tidal change in the forces of politics. It would be like Scott Brown's primary victory was for the Tea Party... lawmakers pay attention to people who can put them out of jobs by way of the primaries.
The requested URL
They steal it out in the open. China does it quietly, and refuses to be open about it. BUT, India lets it be known that they will steal and sell it around the world. At this time, all drugs and chemicals should be stopped from nations like China and India. In both cases, they steal patents and then use the manufacturing to create new companies and lower the prices. Then they can dump on the world market.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's kill the goose that laid the golden gate logic.
Bad idea, clearly. Talented engineer geese must be encouraged, not killed.
About the closest thing to a bribe you'll see in first-world drug development is the payments to the doctors who participate in the clinical trials.
No, the closest thing to bribery you'll see is lobbying the government.
The drugs wouldn't require the FDA to be released. But I don't think a labeling law would be too intrusive. It would state the current FDA status.
People and their doctors would determine their own risk.
I personally don't take any drugs that aren't at least 30 years old. Luckily I'm healthy. If I came down with a rare cancer and traditional methods didn't help who knows what I would try.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
L. Long (para): You only really own the things you can carry on your back and in your hands at a full run.
Get a frame backpack with a belly band and a pair of good boots. It will triple the weight of your real property.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Haven't you been paying attention. Making expenses deductible is a subside.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It happens with government agencies all the time. Suggest that a cut or perhaps even lack of an increase is coming, and it's OH MY GOD, TOTAL SOCIETAL COLLAPSE.
It happened with the financial crisis, and it's happening today. Suggest that the financial sector not be backed by the government and it's OH MY GOD, IT'LL COLLAPSE THE ECONOMY.
Suggest that drug companies do with a bit less profit - at least charge us what they charge abroad and it's OH MY GOD, EVERYONE'S GONNA DIE! LIKE TOMORROW.
Pretty much any suggestion to any organization that it might get less money and it's TOTAL DISASTER.
A parlor game could be suggesting to organizational leaders that some rule be changed which would result in less profit. You would win by coming up with the correct PROCLAMATION_OF_IMPENDING_DISASTER they state.
The fundamental concept of licensing a patent is exactly the same as that of renting one's land. So why is one bad, but the other okay?
Because they're not really the same. One is real property and the other is, for example, a particular shade of the color blue, or several minutes of silence, or a common phrase like: "everyone is entitled to their own opinion" with a minor modification to change "their own" to "my". For that matter, let's not forget that trademarks are generally counted under the aegis of "intellectual property". Trademarks are not justifiable as property. They're only justifiable as a form of consumer protection.
No, I never indirectly said or implied that. My wording provides the implication (my implication) that wikipedia.org is an American organization situated and hosted in the USA. That is the full reason for my use of the phrase "the USA wikipedia".
:>)
You've got to be able to recognize when haters use straw man arguments. First they put words in your mouth in an attempt to make you look foolish for saying something stupid (setting up the straw man). Then they point out how stupid what (they say which) you said really is (pushing the straw man which they had erected down). They do this while hoping that the audience does not notice that you never said what they claim you said (in other words, the straw man argument was actually made by them).
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For an example, see "think of the children" type arguments, when any point of argument is countered with "Oh my god, you want children to be molested by pedophiles!" which uses hyperbole and putting words in your mouth to create a straw man argument.
Haven't you been paying attention. Making expenses deductible is a subside.
In the US all expenses by a business are "deductible" already. Corporate taxes are on earnings, which is revenue minus expenses. Anything that costs money reduces your taxes.
And the subsidy is a minor one. If I spend $1B on R&D I might save $100M in taxes. That might cause you to spend a bit more on R&D, but you aren't going to spend $1B that you don't think will have a return just so that you can save $100M in taxes.