Big Pharma Presses US To Quash Cheap Drug Production In India

An anonymous reader writes "Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), are leaning on the United States government to discourage India from allowing the production and sale of affordable generic drugs to treat diseases such as cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. India is currently on the U.S. government's Priority Watch List — countries whose practices on protecting intellectual property Washington believes should be monitored closely. Last year Novartis lost a six-year legal battle after the Indian Supreme court ruled that small changes and improvements to the drug Glivec did not amount to innovation deserving of a patent. Western drugmakers Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Roche Holding, Sanofi, and others have a bigger share of the fast-growing drug market in India. But they have been frustrated by a series of decisions on patents and pricing, as part of New Delhi's push to increase access to life-saving treatments in a place where only 15 percent of 1.2 billion people are covered by health insurance. One would certainly understand and probably agree with the need for for cheaper drugs. But don't forget that big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs. In 2012 alone, the U.S. government and private companies spent a combined $130 billion (PDF) on medical research."

Comments

That's OK, they know what we want

[istartedi]

That's OK, Big Pharma knows what the audience really wants. Beta pills for everybody, at 10X the price. Really. We did market research. That's what the audience wants.

Re:That's OK, they know what we want

[Anonymous Coward]

Dice claim they know what the audience wants too. The audience begs to differ

WHOOOOOOOOSH

Re:That's OK, they know what we want

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you hear me now? Good!

Soooooo close to Endgame...

[Anachragnome]

US5722418
+
US5644363
+
GoogleGlass
+
Acceptance
=
????

If history is any sort of an indicator, any rights we sell today, our children must buy back with blood tomorrow

Re:Soooooo close to Endgame...

[Anonymous Coward]

No-Script users...

Notice how the script count blocked by No-Script has been rising? Up from 19 to 25 on the main page in the last two days.

Re:Soooooo close to Endgame...

[Anonymous Coward]

Up to 30 now, 5 added in the last 15 minutes.

We need Indian drug companies

[PCM2]

I think it's terrible that the US would try to keep more people from getting access to effective, affordable remedies, such as beta blockers.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

The drug is Gleevec, not Glivec. I take it, and it's a miracle drug for those it helps. And it's expensive as HECK!

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[icebike]

The drug is Gleevec, not Glivec. I take it, and it's a miracle drug for those it helps. And it's expensive as HECK!

Novartis had its 17 years of patent protection. Invented prior 1996, the first patent expired in 2013, and so Novartis decided to seek a patent on a slightly altered version, to gain 20 year protection. The Indian court saw through this and said No way. Good on them.
The drug has paid back its development costs many multiple times already.

This is a common tactic of drug manufacturers as their patents run our they suddenly find a way to color it pink or something equally trivially unimportant change and try to start the patent clock all over. This is a total subversion of the purpose behind patents.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Does India have better Beta blockers?

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, give Timmy and Samphuckus some of those beta blockers.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

The drug is Gleevec, not Glivec. I take it, and it's a miracle drug for those it helps. And it's expensive as HECK!

Novartis had its 17 years of patent protection. Invented prior 1996, the first patent expired in 2013, and so Novartis decided to seek a patent on a slightly altered version, to gain 20 year protection. The Indian court saw through this and said No way. Good on them.
The drug has paid back its development costs many multiple times already.

This is a common tactic of drug manufacturers as their patents run our they suddenly find a way to color it pink or something equally trivially unimportant change and try to start the patent clock all over. This is a total subversion of the purpose behind patents.

Exactly. On one hand, these drugs are expensive to research as you have to go through a series of a whole bunch of failures before you find something that works. You then have to go through all of the regulatory hurdles to get it approved. It's fair that the company that developed the drug should be reimbursed and make a reasonable profit. However, most develop small tweaks to the original formula, save them up, and then use these tweaks just to extend the patent.

My thought is that the fair way to handle this is that the original formulation should be open to generics once the patent expires. The company can register any tweaks under a new patent, and the generics would be prohibited from implementing the specific reformulation until the new patent expires. This way, the original company is rewarded for innovation while still providing a cheaper version.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the truth about minor tweaks for another 20yr patent History repeats itself again and agin

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Drug makers making cosmetic changes to get millions more back than they spent. Its disgusting. Big Pharma makes billions more in profits than they spend on development. If the patent is expired, then its expired. I know Big Pharma will also sit on life-saving drug discoveries so that when the last patent expires, they can offer the next new big thing. I've even heard of them sitting on 3 or 4 generations of discoveries where people would have immensely better quality of life (and longer life), but in the name of profits, the drug makers hold back. Big pharma will also 'squeeze' the desperate and the poor. If India wants cheap generic drugs for people who can barely afford food, then good on them. Also, suss out the difference between "What the US government spends on drug development" and "What Big Pharma spends on drug development". Oh, and remember that other countries spend big bucks on developing drugs too.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[slashmydots]

Effective my ass. Big drug companies want to keep you alive and still partially sick so you pay them your entire life savings. They don't cure anything. They just magically make all the symptoms disappear and keep you alive unless you stop taking them. You think they want to cure seasonal allergies? Hell no! They get a good chunk of my income on allergy meds. They can either make the money once on a cure or once a day forever. Hmm, I wonder.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Or something that prevents BETA amyloid plaque from building up.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you even aware that drug companies usually do not have more than about ten years before drugs become generic and they no longer make much money off them? That they need to somehow actually fund their multi-billion dollar research, out of which maybe one in ten drugs actually makes it to market?

If a company could cure seasonal allergies they would make a huge amount of money immediately. Much more than if they were betting on coming up with an endless supply of allergy drugs that were all good enough to stand out against their competitors.

Do you want to propose an alternative way of funding drug research e.g. through taxation instead? Feel free. But idiot conspiracy theories from people who know nothing about medical research are horribly tiresome.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a BigPharma Blocker. Every other "civilized" nation realizes that the aim of medicine is to treat and cure patients. In the U.S., the purpose of medicine is to make as much money as possible, basically to perform a walletectomy on the patient. We should ban the combination drug BigCampaignContributor/Lobbyist, which our "elected" representatives are addicted to. Heroin is NOT the most addictive substance. MONEY is. Big Pharma should put most of their profits into research and should NOT be allowed to advertise their product in the general media, and legal actions by them should be non-deductible. And profits made by Big U.S. Pharma on products made by them overseas (i.e. moving U.S.jobs overseas) should be U.S. Taxable.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

" That they need to somehow actually fund their multi-billion dollar research"

Yea' that's why they spend more money on marketing, than on research. And funny enough, marketing drugs is illegal everywhere EXCEPT the US and New Zealand.
19 TIMES more than research according to this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/pharmaceutical-companies-marketing_n_1760380.html

Twice as much according to this:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.htm

Thant they manage to spend all of that money in only two countries tells you what you need to know about where their interests are.

Re:We need Indian drug companies

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't 'stop making money' when a drug goes off patent.
They can and do continue making it, and since the system is already running they make a very good profit margin even if they have to lower price to compete with generics... They just don't make AS MUCH profit as they would from having the artificial monopoly granted by governments as an incentive to do research 'in the arts and sciences for the betterment of mankind'.

Joke, right?

[djupedal]

BPharma leaning on the govt.? This is right _after_ they land another donkey punch, right..? Cause we know who is using whom here... Calling it a 'lean' $eem$ to overlook an ongoing love affair, after all. Unless you mean they're leaning on the govt, for more profits and immunity when this turns bigger than it is now, because fake and adulterated consumer drugs in this and all the other markets the control aren't a new thing.

Re:Joke, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not actually certain what you're saying. It's kind of ambigious who's donkey punching whom. Now, I tend to be of the belief that congress is riddle with lobbyists and doesn't represent us, and big companies are using congress to pass laws for them. I don't call it outright bribery, but certainly I call it a matter of influence. Congressfolks talk to the people who write checks, and tend to go along with the people that write checks. They have to, or they don't get reelected.

So, I'm curious if you're seeing a different story than I am. If you are, can you please spell it out in a non ambigious manner? I'm curious.

Wouldn't it be something

[roman_mir]

What a day it would be if instead of lobbying the USA gov't to do more to deny individual freedoms, corporations like these lobbied to INCREASE individual freedoms instead and to REMOVE government prohibitions and regulations in the industry. Get rid of FDA, get rid of government and basically costs drop dramatically that prices could truly be taken down by normal market forces and simultaneously much more money could be made by working on drugs that are not economically feasible given various government barriers to entry, added costs, etc.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[dk20]

You don't really believe things like the "FDA" is what is driving up the price to you?

Canada has an equivalent system (Health Canada) and cheaper drugs then the US. We also have a different copyright system which allows generic drugs to be available sooner. Wonder if that helps drive the prices down?

US Solution? Ban cheap canadian drugs from canada as they were "not tested" or such.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[roman_mir]

Of-course FDA is hugely responsible for all sorts of issues and barriers to entry, from denying drugs altogether, to basically costing companies hundreds of millions to put a new drug on the shelves, where none of it is necessary. Even the crazy Europeans don't do what FDA does in terms of adding costs based on 'efficacy' requirements, never mind 'safety' (which is also quite problematic, when this comes from gov't), but efficacy, which shouldn't cost anything but the company's reputation in the market. There is a ton and a half of designer drugs with minor modifications, the companies are searching for 'cure' to boldness and erectile dysfunction, but thousands of fairly rare conditions will never be addressed, because under such system it is uneconomical.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[icebike]

Get rid of FDA, get rid of government and basically costs drop dramatically that prices could truly be taken down

The FDA doesn't keep drug prices high, they keep people alive. Returning to the days of snake oil is not the solution.

The problem is that patents can be extended by silly little changes that have no real effect, and the world is deprived of the invention or charged unconscionable amounts of money. Glivec (Imatinib) the first of the exceptionally expensive cancer drugs, costing $92,000 a year. Yet its development costs were not that great, and production costs have fallen dramatically.(especially in India).

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[ebno-10db]

You don't really believe things like the "FDA" is what is driving up the price to you?

Have a little respect. Here in the US such beliefs are a religion to some people. Must be Satan (a/k/a the FDA) driving the prices up, let the Holy Market prevail! Ok, it actually is the gubmint, but the part that's responsible for enforcing monopolies for ever greater profit, not the FDA.

US Solution? Ban cheap canadian drugs from canada as they were "not tested" or such.

Yeah, same drugs from the same factory, but they're magically tainted by passing through Canada. OTOH you have some online pharmacies (legitimate outfits) that will drop ship the stuff to people in the US.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[PopeRatzo]

What a day it would be if instead of lobbying the USA gov't to do more to deny individual freedoms, corporations like these lobbied to INCREASE individual freedoms

The last thing any big corporation wants is "individual freedom". The last thing the ruling elite want is "individual freedom".

John Galt is a virulent sociopath. He's managed to take every aspect of the Enlightenment and twist it and corrupt it until people don't know which way is up. America was a pretty impressive experiment, even with all its faults. The system had enough freedoms built in that a couple times a century there would be advances in the middle class, shared prosperity and disenfranchised populations gaining political power. Those days are over. Probably forever.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[roman_mir]

Oh, and of-course, Beta needs to ingest poison and die a horrible, incurable death, could pharma help to get some belladonna or ricin or something?

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[davester666]

and it pisses every single pharma company off that Canada has shorter terms for patent protection than the US

but Harper is working to fix it
http://www.canadians.org/media/canada-caves-us-drug-demands-trans-pacific-partnership-harper-must-make-tpp-text-public-now

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[dk20]

I know, and you know what we need longer term patents as it is clearly the only way to encourage big pharm to do R&D (scarcasm).

How else would "important life saving" medication like yet another "blue pill" come about?

Re: Wouldn't it be something

[VTBlue]

While I agree with you that the FDA is important, it is worth pointing out how paper intensive getting FDA approval is. FDA needs serious reform so that food and medicial innovation can accelerate. The current state of innovation is moving at a snails pace. Keep in mind that even devices like hearing aids (I know they're sophisticated) are regulated which cause prices to be 1000x or more higher.

Re: Wouldn't it be something

[Anonymous Coward]

And hearing aid has not had a meaningful change in 50 years. The sophisticated digital processing is *pointless*. It's an amplifier with a gain control and a few frequency adjustments. They've never gotten past the 90% comprehensibility demonstrated by LickLider in the 190's, basically turning up the amplifier all the way and letting it "clip" at a comfortable amplitude.

The sophistication of hearing aids is a pure advertising game, like women's fashions with fads and new releases that really mean nothing. The key to hearing aid benefit is a competent fitting: it was turned from a black art and rules of thumb into a science by people like Aaron Thornton and Chris Halpin over at the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, decades ago.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[Anonymous Coward]

The FDA is for wall street investors getting all they can from medicare no matter the cost.
We NEED 3rd world countries to compete if that's what it takes.. so there!
Lobbyists will never give US a fair price WAKE UP and smell the future, u dumb plants.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[pepty]

There is a ton and a half of designer drugs with minor modifications, the companies are searching for 'cure' to boldness and erectile dysfunction, but thousands of fairly rare conditions will never be addressed, because under such system it is uneconomical.

Have a look at the new drugs approved last year: MS (2 drugs), multiple myeloma, COPD (2 drugs), HIV, melanoma (2 drugs), lymphoma, fungal infections, prostate and bone cancer, diabetes, depression, influenza, epilepsy, lung cancer, leukemia, dyspareunia, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, osteoporosis. Plus a cure for Hepatitis C. Yep, nothing but boner pills

Even the crazy Europeans don't do what FDA does in terms of adding costs based on 'efficacy' requirements

Would you be talking about the FDA's fast track and breakthrough programs which accelerate the drug approval process when a drug candidate might greatly benefit serious or life-threatening conditions compared to existing drugs?

but efficacy, which shouldn't cost anything but the company's reputation in the market.

So any shell company five times removed from the actual owner can put out a roadside stall and sell cancer drugs because they won't sell fake (but harmless) drugs because, gasp, it would hurt their reputation? And how exactly is the free market supposed to determine that a new drug failed? No, really, answer that for me. Who is going to pony up enough dough to determine efficacy if the only reward is the chance to muck up a company's reputation?

Re: Wouldn't it be something

[pepty]

So which parts of the NDA or ANDA process should be left out?

Re: Wouldn't it be something

[VTBlue]

NDA and ANDA is just a subset of what FDA has jurisdiction over. There are many "medical devices" that are regulated by the FDA that really don't require the regulatory hurdles that companies are required to jump through. Because the FDA holds broad authority by statute, the regulatory process it imposes is too cumbersome for some industries that would be better regulated by more specialized agencies or by manufacturer associations. On the other hand there are areas within food policy that the FDA fails to effectively regulate because of the revolving door. The UK and EU do a far better job with food safety.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[dr_dank]

Returning to the days of snake oil is not the solution.

Take a look at the market in "herbal supplements & remedies". Snake oil never really left, just got a free pass as long as they slap a tiny disclaimer on the bottle or TV screen.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless your net worth is at least $10 million, you're the biggest idiot in the world if you really believe this.

Lack of regulation? Look up the industrial U.S. circa 1910 and tell me that was really a better time. 18 hour work days, risk of fatal injury, and insultingly low wages in the city factories. THAT'S all you get when there's zero regulation - 100% greed, 100% abuse, and 100% suck for anyone that isn't CEO class or above.

Without the FDA we'd be right back to the days of snake oil, as someone else pointed out. That is not the solution, kid.

Re:Wouldn't it be something

[Kalriath]

Don't bother. You're talking to roman_mir, who won't be content until the government consists of one guy in a room with no power and even less funding. Down with government! Long Live our Corporate Overlords!

Jai Hind!

[Applehu Akbar]

This is real News for Nerds. We need to support this effort by India to bust the pharma monopoly if we are ever going to afford medical care in this country. It doesn't matter whether that care is public or private; either style of payment encounters the same tsunami of uncontrolled cost.

But of course, reams of whiny butthurt over the proposed new appearance of Slashdot trumps all real issues this week. Will you crybabies please boycott the site as you have promised and let the rest of us get back to discussing real issues? You're like those Hollywood cokebrains who promise to leave the US whenever some Republican gets elected, but who let us down every time.

Re:Jai Hind!

[s.petry]

I agree with the meat of your statement. At the same time, what gets neglected in these debates is that the Government "should" have a small role in the industry. Primarily, making sure that the drugs being sold are safe.

That "safe" has a few meanings, such as ensuring there are no materials in the drugs that should not be there. Ensuring that the drugs contain what they are supposed to contain, and that the levels are correct. Legally today, our supposedly "controlled" environment can get away with giving you 80% of what they are supposed to give you. They can put trace levels of mercury into vaccines too, so our "controlled" environment is not doing so well.

Point being, yes there should not be this nasty monopoly. Further, there should be more law suits for false advertising against drug agencies, and many people should be in jail for releasing dangerous drugs without advising the public to the dangers (Guardasil).

Our "Government" is failing on all accounts. Not the agents fault mind you, but the agencies fault.

Re:Jai Hind!

[Anonymous Coward]

Our "Government" is failing on all accounts. Not the agents fault mind you, but the agencies fault.

I disagree, it's a big success for the FDA as they keep getting bigger and bigger payoffs to approve drugs without actually testing them.

Re:Jai Hind!

[ebno-10db]

They can put trace levels of mercury into vaccines

You're talking about thimerosal. They stopped using that in 1999. I'm not a big defender of big pharma, but for the record. What's interesting is that the FDA banned it from livestock vaccines before they stopped using it on humans.

Re:Jai Hind!

[icebike]

That "safe" has a few meanings, such as ensuring there are no materials in the drugs that should not be there. Ensuring that the drugs contain what they are supposed to contain, and that the levels are correct.

How about assuring that the drug doesn't doesn't actually kill you?

Safety is one aspect, effectiveness is another. Neither should be left in the hands of drug developers.

We've been down that path before. Every civilized country in the world over sees and regulates the development of drugs. Many countries simply accept the EU or US regulations because they are too small to support their own programs.

We let big Tobacco self regulate right up to 2009. Had the FDA started regulating them in the 30s when it became apparent how bad smoking was who knows how many lives would have been changed.

Re:Jai Hind!

[Applehu Akbar]

There is no necessary connection between assuring drug safety and using the legal system to prop up a monopoly, although the FDA long ago mission-crept beyond its safety mandate to become a willing enabler of Bigger And Bigger Pharma. The FDA keeps compounds that have been selling in Europe and Canada off the US market for years, just to delay competition with one of the big domestic moneymakers. You're not going to convince me that European safety agencies are more lax than the FDA.

Guys, were you aware that in April, 2012, the patent on Viagra expired? But this was not a great day in the history of masculinity because Pfizer was able to get a federal judge to extend its reign to 2019 on the usual mysterious technical grounds.

Re:Jai Hind!

[transporter_ii]

let the rest of us get back to discussing real issues?

Enjoy it while you can, because when Beta goes mandatory, there will not be any more comments.

Re:Jai Hind!

[Uberbah]

At the same time, what gets neglected in these debates is that the Government "should" have a small role in the industry. Primarily, making sure that the drugs being sold are safe.

Why not a large role. As in, publicly finance 100% of drug research, since the worst university could piss away 50% of it's funding and still have a better return than Pharma, who spend more than that on stock options and advertizing.

Re:Jai Hind!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thalydimide is the drug that comes to mind as a counterexample of the FDA being right to keep out a drug approved in Canada. The flip side of this of course is that potentially life-saving drugs are delayed by the FDA.

Re:Jai Hind!

[guises]

I'd add: patents are definitely big news for nerds - we get endless stories about how tech patents are holding back innovation. So why can't we have patent reform? This story, fervent lobbying by drug companies relating to international generics, is the reason.

Drug companies have pushed very hard to make sure that the United States insists that all patents be treated equal in every international trade agreement that they sign. People sometimes erroneously believe that this has something to do with software patents, it doesn't. This is all about charging big money for drugs in developing countries, software patents just come along for the ride. The drug companies don't care about software patents, of course, but they can't have language in the agreement that specifies drugs - if they did that then there would be protests in those countries, people are dying over this after all. So instead they get blanket agreements that apply to all patents.

Re:Jai Hind!

[pepty]

The original patent on sildenafil expired in 2012 and now you can get generic sildenafil in the US. The '446 patent that claims using sildenafil to treat erectile disfunction hasn't expired yet. Canada threw out the '446 Viagra patent because it didn't spell out which of the eleventy bazillion compounds it claimed was actually tested and proven to work.

Re:Jai Hind!

[MrBigInThePants]

Because corporates such as the Pharma companies own your politicians?

I just love the line "But don't forget that big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs.".

Install government-backed monopolies. Let universities use any public grants to research drugs and then sell the patents from that research to said companies. Allow them to buy legislation and orgs like the FDA outright. Turn a blind eye to 1,000,000 dodgy and anticompetitive practices.
Allow said companies to completely rort your entire medical system to the point of obscenity.

etc etc
"But don't forget they make most of the wonder drugs!"

And meanwhile people go bankrupt, remain unwell and of course DIE due to all this complete BS.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

Re:Jai Hind!

[wierd_w]

Thalidomide is an interesting case.

It is a photo enantiomer, meaning that it has a left handed, and right handed isomer that will bend light one way, or another, when in solution.

The right handed isomer is an effective sedative, while the left handed one is a tetragenic compound.

The problem is that even if highly refined so that only R isomer is administered, the pH of the patient's blood will racemize the isomers again.

It could be entirely possible for thalidomide to be safe, if administered with a chaparone to prevent racemization.

At the time, the preparations of thalidomide were a heterogenous mix of both isomers, as there was no research into possible side effects from the mixed sample, and the prospect of birth defects wasnt considered, as the intended use was not for treating morning sickness. As an anti-cancer treatment for non-pregnant people, it is still a useful compound.

Thalidomide was originally developed as a sedative/hypnotic compound, and not as a treatment for nausea. (This would be similar to say, scopolamine, which is used to treat motion sickness. This is not meant to imply that the comounds are related. They arent. However, scopolamine is ALSO useful for treating some forms of nausea. Fancy that.) The use as treatment for nausea is what heralded the use of the product to treat morning sickness, and the subsequent epidemic of infant mortality and deformity that swept the world. It isn't that thalidomide is a bad drug: it was, and is still being shown to be a VERY useful drug. The problem is that thalidomide was not used properly, and was provided OTC, which strongly exacerbated the problem. To pick on poor scopolamine again, it too had a stint as an OTC motion sickness medicine and sleep aid, which ended up causing all manner of problems when certain... shall we say, "Degenerate" people discovered that it made an excellent date rape drug when dissolved in alcoholic beverages.

It isn't that either drug is "bad". It is that the lust for profits from the sale of the drugs can lead to very bad decisions in marketing and distribution of those drugs. Drugs developed for a certain purpose should be extensively and thuroughtly tested for efficacy before being used in alternative manners; such as for instance, Minoxadil. It is the primary ingredient in Rogaine, a male hairloss treatment with FDA approval. It was originally a prescription heart medicine for treating hypertension. It took quite some time for minoxadil to recieve FDA approval for treating alopecia. That is a good thing, as the testing helped establish what the ideal dosages are, and that the concentration must be different for treating women than for treating men. If minoxadil had been rushed to market as a treatment for alopecia, there could have been very dangerous results, since it *IS* a blood pressure medication! This is one of the reasons why rogaine is a topically applied preparation, and not a preparation for internal consumption. (The regrowth of hair was a common side effect of orally administered minoxadil for treating hypertension. Oral administration of the compound would be effective for regrowing hair, but the concentrations needed would make taking the drug dangerous to a patient's cardiac health. Topically applied minoxadil allows high concentrations at the site of interest, with a slow overall rate of absorption, making it ineffective at lowering blood pressure. If rushed to market, it is quite concievable that minoxadil tablets would have been seen for treating alopecia, and that there would have been class action suits as bald people all over started dieing.)

The FDA's insistence on efficacy studies is to prevent dangerous drug use, and to ensure that a drug actually does what it says it does. The long term drug study requirements are intended to catch things like thalidomide birth defects, as it would have shown up with thalidomide being used as a sedative/hypnotic as a

Re:Jai Hind!

[terryducks]

How about assuring that the drug doesn't doesn't actually kill you?

That's a hard problem that's really unique per individual.

Consider all the variables in the environment, genetics and drug to drug interaction, ensuring that drug X wont' kill you, the options get really complex. Patient A, anorexic heroin user vs Patient B overweight smoker on hypertension drugs.

I would settle for assurances on classes, 99% of class a won't die but 20% of class b will.

Think of the different formulations of birth control pills. Some people get emotional some dont'. Some have debilating cramps some don't

Re:Jai Hind!

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the cost of prescription drugs accounts for only about 10% of total healthcare spending in the US? Reducing drug costs further would do almost nothing to lower medical costs. The real problem in the US is that care by hospitals and doctors here is astronomical compared to other countries. Further, the costs for the exact same services at the same hospitals can vary by as much as 500% depending on whether the patient is on medicare, private insurance, or not insured. That's what's f***ed up about our system, not drug costs. And by the way, most "big pharma" are a mess, losing money right and left - See Pfizer, Eli Lilly (whose generic business is helping keep it afloat) and Astra Zeneca. Big pharma isn't rolling in dough as they were in the 80s and 90s. http://www.aetna.com/health-re...

Re:Jai Hind!

[Applehu Akbar]

The fact that hospital costs are even more ridiculously outrageous than drug prices is hardly an endorsement of our monopoly system of medicine. What's happening is that insurance companies are simply refusing to cover many new medications, requiring that patients get older generics prescribed by their in-plan doctors instead. Has your plan just responded to Obamacare by publishing a "revised formulary" that shuts you out of an increased number of new medications? What this means is that pharma companies are not selling their shiniest and newest medications because they have priced themselves out of the market. Instead of having a sale on stagnant inventory, as Dell or Lenovo would in such circumstances to raise money to build newer products, Pharma sends teams of lawyers to Washington to get more "protective" legislation.

How should we address this problem? What I would do is strip the FDA of its powers to keep products off the market or to prevent consumers from buying medications from anywhere in the world they wish (The same rights we enjoy now in the tech field, in other words) Patients or their insurance carriers can still use FDA approval as a gold standard of safety if they wish, while the more adventurous among us can voluntarily undertake greater risk.

Re:Jai Hind!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the thing: I have worked for "big Pharma" (P&G out in Norwich, NY when they still had that facility) as an analytical chemist. We specifically tested our drugs' delivery into the human body versus Indian generics, and the generics did not dissolve correctly ("dissolution" for anyone interested in what the testing procedure is; use the interwebs to learn about it...the intertubes be your friend!), ergo, not releasing the drug in the correct part of the digestive system, so the adsorption is not in accordance with the needed enzymes for metabolism, and the drug dose does not effectively get into the bloodstream correctly. The effective dose is not therefore administered correctly, so the amount getting into the body is not anywhere near what it needs to be for effectiveness! Slight variations of formulation can make a HUGE difference in the efficiency of swallowed drugs...a different filler (i.e.: not active ingredients) , and even something as simple as crystal form makes for different adsorption. Many Ext. Release drugs actually work like this; they use the same compound in a different crystalline form that adsorbs slower. Most active ingredients have numerous crystalline forms. If the wrong one is used, the effectiveness changes...

That said, I've also worked for "Ranbaxy" (Indian generic company) here in the US (via their American subsidiary of "Ohm Labs" out of NJ), and they are more concerned with profits than safety, or even correct and legal paperwork! They have straight-up lied to the FDA numerous times and have many, many problems with their production and products (look it up via the Googles for more info; there is way too much to get into here and not enough time in life to do so!). It ended up feeling "slimy" working there, and I had to quit due to how I couldn't consciously do my job sub-stand as I was instructed to do...I actually found it immoral to receive compensation for falsifying documentation to slide past the FDA unnoticed...just not right...and even though they paid quite well, I couldn't do it...

Also, their business models are based on their antiquated caste system where the people in charge are not the people who need to be nor are educated individuals, but the ones that have the family name of the higher caste are in charge. And they only care about money and status...

So, if you don't care about substandard, generic drugs, then by all means purchase the shitty made Indian Generics. But do not complain when your drugs do not work as advertised! Drugs that do not work are no better than placebos...Enjoy THAT and good luck with any illness your Indian generics are going to heal/subside...they are a waste of money and a waste of a doctor's visit...

Re:Jai Hind!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because communism doesn't work.

Re:Jai Hind!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you reported the crimes to the authorities and went to the press correct?
No?

Hu.. maybe because of how well you were compensated? Or.. Maybe you thought no one would employ you in the future, because you know that they all do this, just not quite enough for your slime level to cause you to quit?

Harsh, yes. But when good men stay silent and all that.

It is far, far better ...

[Alain Williams]

that poor people die because they cannot buy the cheap drugs that may save their lives than a few rich western pharma lose any profit. :-(

Let them produce cheap drugs for local consumption. OK don't allow them to be imported to the west where (most) people can afford them. But condemning people to die just to protect your profits is, frankly, sick. Maybe not much different from tobacco companies, but still sick.

Re:It is far, far better ...

[user317]

So let me be the devils advocate here,

The argument is that if India does this the rest will follow and then the companies will not be able to make up their research costs to facilitate the development of new drugs, since the current batch of drugs was researched with the expectation of selling them worldwide.

If pharmaceutical companies are making that much money, why doesn't India create their own state or private pharmaceutical companies (or buy a stake in Pfizer) and use the profits to pay for local drugs? India has an enormous pool of talented researchers and a big enough budget to accomplish this. As they argue, the profits are so large then there is no way they could lose money. That would be a win win for everyone.

Re:It is far, far better ...

[Uberbah]

The argument is that if India does this the rest will follow and then the companies will not be able to make up their research costs

The problem for the devil's argument is that Pharma spends double the amount on advertizing that they do on research. This is about a greedy industry seeking to extract every last dollar it can, even if it means some poor folks on the other side of the planet will die. Not recouping research costs.

Re:It is far, far better ...

[rtb61]

So the obvious counter to this, is all pharmaceutical research goes government and public funded. Successful drugs are then open to production by all facilities with licences to produce pharmaceuticals. Skipping all the 1000% profit margins, ludicrous luxury holidays for doctors, scams to sell patented drugs and all the other psychopathy currently associated with the industry.

Re:It is far, far better ...

[Anonymous Coward]

even if it means some poor folks on the other side of the planet will die. Not recouping research costs.

In fact, it's a good bet every single one of us will die.

Re:It is far, far better ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you sir for pointing this out.
Profits over life, who can afford them except the bottomless pockets of medicare

Re:It is far, far better ...

[Anonymous Coward]

India has an enormous pool of talented researchers and a big enough budget to accomplish this.

And rape. Don't forget the rape.

Re:It is far, far better ...

[dbIII]

So the obvious counter to this, is all pharmaceutical research goes government and public funded

Almost all of the new stuff already is. A vast amount of the commercial stuff ends up being little more than patent extension. Most of the rest is jumping on a public funded solution after a promising clinical trial.
One of the most disgusting excuses for a vast difference in prices between a US version of a vaccine and the prices in the rest of the world was "development costs". The vaccine in question was funded by the Australian government and developed in Australia ( human papilloma vaccine) - and licencing costs are no higher for the US licencee than any other manufacturer. In that case (and many others I suspect) it's just price gouging.

Re:It is far, far better ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The downside of poor people dying is not really lose of pharma profit. The downside is that while these idiots would take a pill that will save them, they won't use any medical device or procedure that will keep them from having 10 fuckin kids. So their population growth is not kept in check by disease any longer, as it should be historically. This is why bringing drugs, vaccines, and other life-saving technology to the third world will just fuck us in the end.

Captcha: malaria

Re:It is far, far better ...

[Anonymous Coward]

that poor people die because they cannot buy the cheap drugs that may save their lives than a few rich western pharma lose any profit. :-(

Let them produce cheap drugs for local consumption. OK don't allow them to be imported to the west where (most) people can afford them. But condemning people to die just to protect your profits is, frankly, sick. Maybe not much different from tobacco companies, but still sick.

I have a better idea. Why don't they invent their own drugs.

Re:BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[lgw]

Wow. I hate to be the guy asking "why is this on Slashdot", but WTF? This is a purely political click-trolling story. This is not what Slashdot is for.

You know, I'm actually OK with the blatant Slashvertisements, as long as they're geek-interest products. Man's got to pay the bills; I understand. But this pure-political story BS needs to stop!

Pill Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

N/T

Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India ...

[timothy]

It sounds odd, or the start of a joke, but I'm serious.

She ordered some variety of medicine from an online pharmacy (which one, I don't know) and had some heavy cognitive dissonance. 'Did I just give money to scammers?' She waited slightly longer than she expected to, and had the thought that she really had been taken for a ride ... but then they arrived, and (to her surprise) were postmarked India.

"They were cheap, and worked."

She'll be displeased to hear about just how far regulatory capture can go, in this arena ...

timothy

Don't forget US taxpayers pay ALL of that research

[Anonymous Coward]

The Medicare/Medicaid drug reimbursement is already more than the private cost of research (plus reasonable production costs for those drugs).

I clicked on this big fat ugly link...

[Anonymous Coward]

I alone am a better web developer than the monkeys you have churning this shit out. Fix it.

As soon as I hear "Big "

[chispito]

Big Oil, Big Automotive, Big Chance-I-Stop-Paying-Attention.

Just because you think all large companies are evil doesn't mean everyone else does.

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Oil, Big Automotive, Big Chance-I-Stop-Paying-Attention.

Just because you think all large companies are evil doesn't mean everyone else does.

Statistics show that idiots argue against facts all the time.

We often find them in positions of power within government or religion.

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you think all large companies are evil doesn't mean everyone else does.

They usually use those terms in articles like this. Then, as the companies start doing more and more evil shit, people start using it all the time, and for good reason; the companies have shown themselves to be evil.

Isn't it funny how these companies pretend to support the free market, but then beg the government to destroy competitors?

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[Uberbah]

As soon as I hear "Big " Big Oil, Big Automotive, Big Chance-I-Stop-Paying-Attention.

You mean, you were looking for an excuse to stop listening. And found one.

Just because you think all large companies are evil

Straw man. Look, this isn't hard story to grasp. Large, influential industries that wouldn't think a second before sending your job overseas for third world labor want the USG to make sure said third world labor pays first-world prices for their drugs.

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[AcidPenguin9873]

Large, influential industries that wouldn't think a second before sending your job overseas for third world labor

Except that they didn't do that when developing these drugs. They paid first-world salaries for research, development, testing, more testing, still more testing, even more testing, and then regulation compliance. Without those first-world costs, there's no drug that you want to sell for third-world prices.

want the USG to make sure said third world labor pays first-world prices for their drugs.

The world wants the US to foot the bill for their drug research, and then once that hard part is done, sell the drugs for materials and menial labor cost? I don't think so. If the prices are so far out of balance, why don't they start their own drug research institute with third-world salaries, testing, and regulations?

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[dryeo]

They've already had their 17 years of patent protection and charged enough to recoup their costs and make a decent profit which is the social contract with patents. Now they change the colour of the pill or some such minor change and expect another 20 years.

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying the US government should piss all over Indian sovereignty only to make more poor people die? If you think the majority of Indians can afford to pay US prices (or even first-world prices) for drugs you're completely ignorant of the situation in India.

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[AcidPenguin9873]

Now they change the colour of the pill or some such minor change and expect another 20 years.

In this particular instance, you're probably right.

My general point stands though. If the Indian government wants to provide access to modern pharmaceuticals at prices that Indians can afford, time for their government to issue some big-money loans to start an Indian pharmaceutical research group. India doesn't have that kind of money? Sell some debt and pay interest on it, just like the U.S. has been forced to do for years. If all these countries had to do their own original research, maybe the U.S. debt situation wouldn't look so terrible in comparison.

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[L. J. Beauregard]

One, you are not going to get rich as soon as Big Gubmint gets out of your way. Two, Paris Hilton is not going to sleep with you. Three, every word that you hear from talk radio and Fox Propaganda is a lie, including "and" and "the".

Four, no one said that "all large companies are evil"; but when plutocrats raid pension funds, dump poison into the air and water, rig the laws in their own favor and deny people lifesaving medication, that is evil. If that is not evil then there is no such thing as evil.

But keep on ranting about Feelthy Queers and Dirty Jezebels and all the other bogeymen that Rush Limbaugh tells you to hate.

Re:As soon as I hear "Big "

[Khashishi]

It's not that companies that are successful are evil. The problem is that the system in place for big companies is usually some kind of limited liability corporation, in which the board of directors has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders to place money above all other considerations. It doesn't matter if the founders were well-meaning, once a company is sold to capitalists.

Re:Back in 48 mins

[runeghost]

to read another post by soulskill cron

Thanks, that one made me giggle.

Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you get for outsourcing the drug manufacturing to India...

Re:Karma

[junglee_iitk]

Who modded this insightful? This is anti-informative, whatever that is. US doesn't 'outsource' drug production to India. Indian firms read patents and create generics from it.

Re:Karma

[Miamicanes]

Actually, to legally copy a drug in India, you'd have to come up with a new process for manufacturing it. Indian IP law recognizes only manufacturing processes, not the final chemicals themselves or the purpose for which they're used.

Case in point: in America, you can take a drug like Proscar, approved in 5mg strength for treating prostate problems, and get a brand new patent for a 1mg strength used for hair growth. In India, you'd be politely told, "No" when you applied for the second patent, because as far as Indian IP law is concerned, unless you come up with a new way to manufacture the drug, you've done nothing worthy of patent protection.

The same goes for extended-release forms. If you're taking an old drug and coating bits with dissolving coating, India will yawn and say, "sorry, no new patent for you. " You'd have to come up with something groundbreaking, like OROS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... ), which makes drugs that would otherwise have intolerably-short half-lives viable.

Although Indian IP law doesn't regard ER forms as necessarily being special, India's unwillingness to allow patents on anything besides the manufacturing process actually opens the door to Indian pharmaceutical companies releasing ER forms LONG before the original patent expires, and before the American developer of the original drug comes out with its own version. If an Americana pharma company gets a patent on a drug & plans to wait until the first patent is about to expire before patenting an ER form, an Indian company who comes up with an alternate manufacturing process can blow their plan out of the water and release an improved ER form YEARS sooner.

Re:Karma

[junglee_iitk]

That has got nothing to do with GP or my comment, and hence off-topic.

Unless 'All American' tablets are in fact being manufactured in India, there is no outsourcing going on.

Re:Karma

[El Rey]

Bullshit! I know a guy whose job is to audit the factories in India that US drug manufacturers have outsourced drug production to. You think all US non-generic prescription drugs are manufactured in the US? You are wrong!

That's the gop health care plan for you

[Joe_Dragon]

They want big business to profit of sick people and don't like stuff like medicare or medicaid

Okay, they are leaning on the US to discourage it.

[mark-t]

But is the US government actually responding to said leaning, or are they currently ignoring it?

RE:Horses for Courses

[Anonymous Coward]

All Horse Meat is in the Super Market

patented marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Government spends public money on basic research. Corporations spend on sugar-coating, merchandising, and marketing.

The corporations then charge the people inflated monopoly prices. And offshore the profits - safe from having to return taxes on them. And get a lot of subsidies, handouts, and misdirected state services, appropriated to furthering their private interests, instead of the real public well-being.

Re:Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India

[ebno-10db]

Yup. A friend of mine needed some medications, taken on a regular basis. IIRC he had some limited insurance, but it didn't cover squat in medication. He ordered them online from a pharmacy in Canada. A legitimate outfit - had to show he had the prescriptions and whatnot. The meds were drop shipped from Switzerland and India, complete with funny foreign return addresses and stamps. He saved a bundle. There were the real McCoy too, not some brand X knockoff. Switzerland and India was where they were made.

Even better is doggy Prozac. Apparently they have Prozac for dogs - and it's the exact same stuff, from the same factory, but at a fraction of the price. This one is 2nd hand, from my neighbor the veterinarian, but she's not a BS artist. A coworker's wife had a Prozac Rx, so hubby writes an Rx for their dog, and she takes it.

Fuck Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

       

Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet. (Copy-paste the html from here so links don't get mangled!)

       

On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design. Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system.

       

If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.

       

We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott

       

Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
  http://slashdot.org/recent - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories

       

Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

        -----=====##### LINKS #####=====-----
       

Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415

        Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441

        Alternative Slashdot: http://altslashdot.org (thanks Okian Warrior (537106))

Re:Fuck Beta

[mark-t]

There's a word for people who keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome.

Personally, I'm rather tired of seeing this shit on every single story... I don't like beta either, but all this repeated drivel does, which can only be classified as off-topic and essentially spam, is actively degrade what usefulness the website actually has before beta even becomes mandatory.

So shut the fuck up... I'm pretty sure they heard you the first time. If you don't think that they are listening, then repeating yourself isn't going to solve anything, and thinking it will do anything other than annoy people who want to enjoy what's left of slashdot while it lasts, is... well... as I said above, there's a word for that.

Re:Fuck Beta

[Spy Handler]

*You* are hearing the same thing over and over again. There are other people who might be seeing this for the first time.

Or am I wrong and the entire ad industry is insane? Everybody at Google is insane?

When you have an important message to convey to the masses, it makes sense to repeat the message until everybody gets it or you reach a saturation point where it might backfire.

Beta sucks btw, but they can keep it as long as I can go into settings and choose the classic skin.

Re:Fuck Beta

[demontechie]

Once beta becomes mandatory, it's too late, and those who actually drive the conversations will just leave.

And if that's what Dice wants, that's what they'll get.

Re:Fuck Beta

[transporter_ii]

Fuck you.

Re:Fuck Beta

[mark-t]

....or you reach a saturation point where it might backfire.

I believe it may have already reached that point. The fuck beta spam that pervades every single story on here is tiresome, repetitive, and actively gets in the way of seeing genuinely interesting posts that are relevant to the topic being discussed. If that's going to go away when beta happens, that's genuinely unfortunate, but why start fucking it up for everybody before beta is even here? Really, this kind of drivel just seems petty, spiteful, immature, and just plain annoying. On par with any kind of other spam that some people might put here.

Re:Fuck Beta

[mark-t]

That's absolutely right...

So why start driving people away already by repeating the same thing over and over and over, blocking the views of potentially other interesting posts by people that are still here?

I get that people are upset about it... but this kind of shit is basically just holding the entire slashdot readership hostage... blocking *EVERYBODY* from seeing useful posts because their screens are filled with "fuck beta this" and "fuck beta that", using up a tremendous amount of screen real estate to not convey absolutely any new information, which I might point out, is one of the fucking things that is so annoying about beta in the first place!!!

Re:Fuck Beta

[db10]

You are a fool. Persistence is the only strategy that works, and it's an honest strategy because users are passionate about this site. You want people to complain for a bit, and then fade away. Many have been on this site for over a decade, and expect some reciprocation of the loyalty for their contributions to the site over the years. Again, you are a fool and a buffoon sir. Good night.

Re:Fuck Beta

[mark-t]

As you may or may not have noticed from my slashdot id, I've been here quite a while myself. But my point is that these kinds of comments are incredibly off-topic... and don't actually help the board be the best that it can be.

All it is doing is turning the website to hell even faster than beta... At least for the time being I can turn beta off, but what I can do shut people up who won't stop bitching about it?

Persistence is fine... but management has made it clear that they aren't listening to these rants, so they are futile. and when a strategy isn't actually producing the intended result. then you really need to try to come up with something else. Otherwise, as I said... you're just endlessly repeating the same thing over and over, and somehow expecting a different outcome. That's not really persistence... there's another word for that, and it's not a positive thing.

Slashdot may die as we know it when classic mode disappears,the users will find other communities to go to, and life will go on.

But hey... if you feel slinging ad-hominems really means anything, knock yourself out.

Re:Fuck Beta

[db10]

Again, foolish. You mistake this effort as detrimental to the future of Slashdot. No, wrong. The effort is the last stand for the future of Slashdot as we know it.

Re:Fuck Beta

[Fruit]

As you may or may not have noticed from my slashdot id

I'm on beta and can't see the id, you insensitive clod!

Re:Fuck Beta

[mark-t]

I see this effort as detrimental to what slashdot is *right now*. I don't like the way beta is either, but I'm not interested in sabotaging what's left of even the classic experience for everybody who isn't using beta just because I don't like it.

It's an online version of a temper tantrum, and is no more productive... If slashdot won't even listen to well-reasoned arguments about what needs to be fixed with beta, what makes anyone think they'll listen to this shit that just makes the current experience worse for what's left of slashdot right now? Because you have to do something? Wrong.... this shit is worse than nothing because it only further reduces any chance that management is going to ever listen to people who actually have good points to make... and who have done so in the appropriate forums, instead of effectively taking everybody else on slashdot, and holding them hostage, threatening management by effectively saying "do what *I* say, right now... or I'll just keep on fucking up this site until you either listen, or there's just nothing left of it". Because that's what those stupid posts look like.

Re:Timothy didn't hear us at all

[Anonymous Coward]

What a constructive use of time.

Is there any other sites we should just copy/paste "beta" on?

FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

>big pharma [...] is the number one creator of new drugs
>big pharma [...] is the number one creator of upper-class-only drugs

Fixed that for you. Do I have to fix the shitty beta too?

What's the point of creating new drugs if no one can make and use them?

>big pharma [...] is the number one creator of upper-class-only drugs

And are we worried that will change? The number one creator will instead be the middle-class "commoners"? Makers gonna make? Gonna make something THE HUMAN FUCKING RACE will benefit from?

How dreadful. Almost as dreadful as the /.beta

-AC.Falos

Re:FTFY

[manu0601]

big pharma [...] is the number one creator of upper-class-only drugs

Fixed that for you.

I would even say it as "big pharma [...] is the number one creator of profitable drugs "

Look at statins. They are inefficient at reducing death, and have many adverse effects. The goal of this drug is not health, it is profit.

Re:BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[BlueKitties]

Big Mean Userbase Presses /. To Quash Superior Affordable Site Production For Women's Rights

No, they weren't....

[trims]

The current crop (and the future crops, too) of drugs were NEVER intended to have to recoup costs out of non-developed-world countries.

In fact, pretty much ALL drug research is based solely on the American market. That is, everything else outside the American market is gravy (or, in this case, pure profit). The metrics are driven by how long it takes to recoup money from the USA's market.

The reason why is that the US drug market (due to a combination of large population, and completely unregulated pricing) is so much more lucrative than anywhere else, by an order of magnitude even more than Western Europe. That's right - the USA alone brings in more profit THAN THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD for a drug.

Letting India manufacture these domestically (and, heck, the entire rest of the developed world) wouldn't affect drug research and investment strategies one little bit. The big fear from drug companies is reimportation, where drugs manufactured in India are imported back into the USA for sale, without the major patent premium being paid. This is fairly trivially avoidable.

So, yeah, in the end, it's about squeezing that last dime in profits out of people, and not fundamentally giving a damned about anything else.

Re:No, they weren't....

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's examine the flip side of this reasoning - if the rest of the world had policies similar to the USA, how much more drug research would be being done and how much suffering alleviated? Why is it left to the USA to bear the full cost of researching new drugs for the world?

Re:No, they weren't....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is fairly trivially avoidable.

Yea. Like the "fairly trivial" matter of blackmarket cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine that floods the streets of every city and town in the US.

People already smuggle blackmarket and greymarket pharmaceuticals into the US in enormous quantities.Take for example pain management drugs like Oxycodone and Oxycontin, or all the toothpastes, shoe sprays, rub-on lotions, etc. It is an open secret in the pharmaceutical industry that more than half the pain management products by volume sold are diverted into black markets, that is why every pharmaceutical company is constantly developing novel delivery mechanisms for PM drugs; they know that addicts are smart enough to read the box and figure out what will get them their fix, and regulation and controls will take months or years to catch up with addict ingenuity.

It can't have taken anyone very long to figure out if you take "high heels pain relief spray"*, spray it in a bag and huff it that you can get high.

The US is built on the foundation of the black and grey markets, and it's not going away anytime soon.

* I can't remember the name of this product, but I saw it on the news recently, and my first thought was "housewives are going to huff the shit out of this shit".

Re:No, they weren't....

[Trax3001BBS]

Letting India manufacture these domestically (and, heck, the entire rest of the developed world) wouldn't affect drug research and investment strategies one little bit. The big fear from drug companies is reimportation, where drugs manufactured in India are imported back into the USA for sale, without the major patent premium being paid. This is fairly trivially avoidable.

So, yeah, in the end, it's about squeezing that last dime in profits out of people, and not fundamentally giving a damned about anything else.

Modafinal is a drug available from India on the cheap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
commercially it was being sold as Provigil.

The article I didn't read hits upon this drug, I've purchased it a few times from India as Provigil (with a prescription), it's come I'm sure as modafinil.

Provigil's patent was to expire in 2012 thus begot Nuvigil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... which is slower acting, Provigil's patent was renewed for a very long time, I haven't got an answer to when, but told it's no time soon.

Nuvigil runs around $20 a tablet, Provigil $25 a box of 50 (India), Provigil isn't being sold anymore (in the US) that I know of just kept for it's patent.

Modafinal is your basic generic drug, everything after is research.

In the case of Newvigil, it being such an exceptional drug they are asking for more than it's worth, where as Modafinal being virtually the same thing, is asking it's manufacture price and a bit of profit.

Re:No, they weren't....

[msobkow]

Early five digits. :D

Re:No, they weren't....

[msobkow]

I think their concern is that US courts might start following the Indian court's views on what constitutes "obvious" tweaking for the sole purpose of extending a patent.

That fear is worth spending hundreds of millions in court to salve the terror of lost revenue on a global (including US) scale.

Not that they deserve money for trivial reforumulations, such as the "safer" Oxycontin packaging. The main drug itself has not changed so there should never have been a patent extension allowed. Packaging is just packaging. It's not the drug.

And while I'm on this here soap box, let me point out that the addicts have, of course, found ways around the "safer" packaging and are still shooting up on suburban streets, patents or no patents. The whole "safer" packaging thing is a lie. Safer for their pockets, nothing else.

Re:No, they weren't....

[msobkow]

Only 11 away from being a 4-digit moniker. :)

Re:No, they weren't....

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably an additional worry is that hospitals would still charge the horrific amount they charge for drugs and they won't see the profits on that one either!

Re:No, they weren't....

[Khashishi]

It's not. But USA is a lot richer than India, so you can't really expect India's research capabilities to keep up. When USA starts to decline, other countries will take up the slack in new research. Get rid of the nationalistic view and realize we are all humans.

XR Drugs

[ScottCooperDotNet]

This is a common tactic of drug manufacturers as their patents run our they suddenly find a way to color it pink or something equally trivially unimportant change and try to start the patent clock all over. This is a total subversion of the purpose behind patents.

Or formulate an XR "Extended Release" version of the drug under the same name.

On the other hand, the profits from existing drugs helps pay for research into new drugs to some degree, so could India be similar to a big company that uses Open Source but doesn't release any of their own code?

#iamslashdot

Re:XR Drugs

[davester666]

well, lots of companies use open source, but don't release their own code, and we don't tell them to stop using open source...

and it's not like India is making an improved drug and keeping the formula to themselves...

Re:XR Drugs

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a common tactic of drug manufacturers as their patents run our they suddenly find a way to color it pink or something equally trivially unimportant change and try to start the patent clock all over. This is a total subversion of the purpose behind patents.

Or formulate an XR "Extended Release" version of the drug under the same name.

Both of those are incorrect. Full disclosure--I am currently a Novartis employee after my company's former owners, Nestle, sold us off to them a couple years ago. I assure you that adding red dye #5 to the mix and changing a pill to pink is not enough to restart the patent clock, nor is reducing fillers and calling it "extended release." Even the big mean US patent system shoots those attempts down quickly. We tried making an "extra strength" version of our biggest seller, Patanol, a few years ago and lost. We had to come up with a lot of changes to get the once-a-day version approved.

Posting as AC for obvious reasons.

Re:XR Drugs

[rusty0101]

Using open source does not require that you release your code. It's distributing open source software that requires that you make available (at a nominal cost) the changes you have made to that code, or the entirity of the source code if you are the original generator of it.

I suspect that the analogy that more accurately describes your intent is a big company finding an image in the Creative Commons with the allowance to use freely with attribution, allowing the use of the image in commercial products, and distributing material (manuals, advertising, or using the image on their public website, and Not providing attribution. Or possibly an embeded system from a company that sells routers, and includes open source software in the router, but does not make available the modifications to the source code needed to make the binaries usable on the embeded system. Then again, I could be wrong.

Re:XR Drugs

[tragedy]

nor is reducing fillers and calling it "extended release."

Right, because all the extended release versions of doxycycline have totally been denied patent protection as new drugs. Incidentally, I don't think any of us are particularly impressed that your company got a new patent on an old drug by doubling the dose (I'm sure they threw in something to reduce irritation from the higher dose too making totally a new invention).

Re:XR Drugs

[sirlark]

I don't know if AC's get notified about reponses to their comments, but either way, this question goes out in response.

We tried making an "extra strength" version of our biggest seller, Patanol, a few years ago and lost. We had to come up with a lot of changes to get the once-a-day version approved.

The phrase "come up with" implies some measure of deliberate but spurious inventiveness, as if you made the changes exclusively to get a new patent, rather than to improve the drug itself. While the grandparent's post mentioned adding pink dye, and that surely is a trival change, if you are "coming up" with changes, it sound like your are fixing something that isn't broken, and the only reason your tinkering beyond adding a dye is precisely because that is not enough to get a patent. In other words, you are ding precisely enough to get more money (as a company), rather than making the best possible drug.

So, genuine questions here:

Why do you think such behaviour should be rewarded?

Why should limited tinkering that was done to change the drug without the eventual aim of improvement extend a patent?

Re:XR Drugs

[martin-boundary]

On the other hand, the profits from existing drugs helps pay for research into new drugs to some degree, so could India be similar to a big company that uses Open Source but doesn't release any of their own code?

Research, like many other activities, is influenced by fashions. Arguably, by making a particular drug widely available very cheaply, the resulting enhanced interest will stimulate more funding for similar drugs, by virtue of the increased popularity and availability. This increased funding within the industry could be many times more valuable than the amount a single company can derive from the consequences of patent protection.

Re:XR Drugs

[Anonymous Coward]

nor is reducing fillers and calling it "extended release."

Right, because all the extended release versions of doxycycline have totally been denied patent protection as new drugs. Incidentally, I don't think any of us are particularly impressed that your company got a new patent on an old drug by doubling the dose (I'm sure they threw in something to reduce irritation from the higher dose too making totally a new invention).

lmao surely they "they threw in something to reduce irritation from the higher dose too making totally a new invention).

Re:XR Drugs

[RockDoctor]

On the other hand, the profits from existing drugs helps pay for research into new drugs to some degree, so could India be similar to a big company that uses Open Source but doesn't release any of their own code?

Why do you think that Big Companies who use Open Source are obliged to develop new code or modify it in any way? After all, a huge amount of most Big Companies is simply doing paperwork, for which Open-/Libre-/ApacheOpen- Office is perfectly adequate.

Re:Okay, they are leaning on the US to discourage

[Anonymous Coward]

But is the US government actually responding to said leaning, or are they currently ignoring it?

Not sure, the article didn't say how much "campaign contributions" PhRMA have paid congress-critters recently.

Cheaper drugs are the way to go, not newer more ex

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the option of saving more people with generic and cheaper drugs over newer drugs that do amazing things but prices a majority of the population out, the option is pretty clear- save more people with cheaper drugs, not grant more patents to giant companies who tweak a drug's formula slightly and get another patent. In fact, generic drugs just mean you switch out some ingredients, they're not direct infringements on patents.

Re:Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India

[TheloniousToady]

Even better is doggy Prozac. Apparently they have Prozac for dogs - and it's the exact same stuff, from the same factory, but at a fraction of the price. This one is 2nd hand, from my neighbor the veterinarian, but she's not a BS artist. A coworker's wife had a Prozac Rx, so hubby writes an Rx for their dog, and she takes it.

Looks like he finally found a way to stop her from eating the dogfood.

Wut nahw?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I support patents on drugs to help bring new ones into existence -- the US invents half of what's invented each year (and further implying the rest of the world, whatever it is doing, shoudld be more like the US. Why? To save lives.)

But I do not support using legal trickery and rent-seeking to make it difficult to obtain legitimately expired patent generic drugs.

Re:Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India

[glavenoid]

I don't know how I feel about antidepressants for dogs, or any other non-human animal for that matter. Can dogs be demonstrably depressed to a degree that they require medication rather than love and exercise? Or is this something that people who got a dog too big for their yard give to placate their pet when it spends 90% of its miserable life in a tiny kennel in the basement so it doesn't shed fur all over the sofa?

what's the percentage of drug research by the u.s.

[Anonymous Coward]

I ask because if a pharmaceutical company is reaping the benefits of free support/research from the U.S. taxpayers then my response to this maneuver is to say f*ck the company, if they take the taxpayer's coin, then they work for the taxpayer.

Re:Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India

[glavenoid]

Damn, now I'm depressed thinking about that poor miserable dog in the kennel in the basement. Maybe I need some doggy prozac.

Big Numbers! Give Us Money!

[Bob9113]

But don't forget that big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs. In 2012 alone, the U.S. government and private companies spent a combined $130 billion (PDF) on medical research.

Ahh, very large numbers without context. Does such a good job of sounding like it means something. Here's some context: 70% increase in profits in the past 10 years, and we have way more drugs available than we can afford. Increasing government imposed restrictions on competition to drive up market price is what you do when a critical industry is having problems, not when they're flush with cash and demand and prices are skyrocketing. It's freaking econ 101 ferfucksake.

Also: Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.

Re:Big Numbers! Give Us Money!

[MtHuurne]

But don't forget that big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs. In 2012 alone, the U.S. government and private companies spent a combined $130 billion (PDF) on medical research.

Ahh, very large numbers without context.

There is a little context:

Last year Novartis lost a six-year legal battle after the Indian Supreme court ruled that small changes and improvements to the drug Glivec did not amount to innovation deserving of a patent.

So some of that research is being spent on patentable variations rather than better cures, which is a waste of time and money when looking at the complete healthcare system. Commercial research also produces actually useful drugs, but perhaps it would be more efficient to let governments lead the research and let pharma companies handle the production side.

Re:Big Numbers! Give Us Money!

[Yaotzin]

I am unsure how the process works in the US, but in Europe no new drug will be approved unless it's verifiably better than already existing drugs. So simply exchanging a functional group for a bioequivalent won't get you anywhere. Meaning that the money is spent on better cures. Basic research is already mostly done by universities (funded with tax money) but I doubt actual product development would be done more efficiently by them since (IMHO) a lot of university research projects tend to go nowhere or reach already acknowledged conclusions.

However, purchase of drugs should be done by as large entities as possible for maximum efficiency and lowest cost for the individual. As it is today, the US is where most pharmaceutical companies earn money, because they can charge higher prices per pill since buying entities are smaller. This means pharmaceutical companies will largely ignore markets where they will have to deal with societal scale buying entities, and we're all worse off for it. You pay more, we get fewer drugs.

Just because its new doesn't necessarily mean good

[atari2600a]

Usually it just means you need to start testing & data collection from scratch instead of using pounds of emperical evidence. The last thing they want are naturally-grown drugs (think hemp) they have no intellectual control or explaoitative profit revenue from. Half the shit that ends up on the market ends up to be a "patentable" analog of some other shit, perpetuated by lack of preventative or psychological health checkups, bad or misguided research, & all those fresh doctors that refuse to participate in internal medicine, without even deciding what their end career goal is.

Re:BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[dmbasso]

The reason is pretty clear, it is about Imaginary Property (IP). The same pixie dust that makes copyright, trademarks, and patents.

And they're bullying a poor country like "hey, all these medicines that we were not going to sell because you can't afford, you are not allowed to make them yourselves; tell your population to just die." Yeah, pretty nice.

India will probably win

[Anonymous Coward]

India's needs for good medications are larger than USA's ambition to license intellectual property. Big Pharma companies are between the rock and the hard place. If they choose to license India's government with what would be a typical 2%, 3% or 5% royalty (payable on net sales) arrangement, such arrangement will not be beneficial to the Pharma companies because of the two factors: a) rock bottom prices will not allow to earn expected royalties to which pharma companies are used to and b) it is easy to predict that cheap medication (which is considered a brand medication everywhere else) at one third of the world will appear at the rest of the markets, currently this phenomenon is called parallel trading. For the sake of argument we should assume that such model will be accepted by both India and China, thus one third of the world. Now, the $130 Billion spent on research is a number which is inflated and politically perverted, prepared by Washington DC metro area lawyers and smooth-talkers. In reality this number of $130B probably includes money spent to lawyers, FDA, investors of acquired companies and the last category will be scientists who are doing real research. Probably one tenth of this amount or less. It is factually not correct that Big pharma is number one creator of the drugs, though it used to be in the past. If you were to look carefully, Big Pharma is the biggest and most successful investor in smaller companies, with the biggest administrative muscle of internal lawyers and bureaucrats to overcome and overpower FDA's army of the bureaucrats. To continue investing Big Pharma needs to spend ever increasing amounts of money for new promising products, and such projects are very hard to find and, when found, are very expensive to buy. That is why Big Pharma needs to pay top dollar for the research performed by universities and smaller companies, and, on the other hand, to charge such expenses to the selling price of their current medications.

Big Pharma does not create new drugs

[maitas]

Please look at this TED http://www.ted.com/talks/maria...

Re:Big Pharma does not create new drugs

[Rich0]

Virtually all the drugs on the market had their clinical trials paid for by pharma companies. For each one there were many more that had an equal level of spending but were demonstrated to be unsafe and thus never made it onto the market.

It is true that the initial mechanisms and sometimes even the lead molecules are discovered elsewhere, but there are thousands of these discovered every year and most of them will do nothing good for your health, It takes billions of dollars in trials to figure out which ones are which.

I'm all for having the government fund that activity and own the patents on the drugs so that they can be freely licensed. I doubt it will make drugs much cheaper, but it will change who actually pays for them.

Huge success

[HalfFlat]

Hundreds of billions spent on drug development, primarily driven by state investment and infrastructure, and billions of people in India and elsewhere gain significant health benefits. Really, this is the way it is supposed to work. That some private individuals are not making as large a personal profit is purely their own problem.

Re:Huge success

[Anonymous Coward]

And do not forget that the massive advertising campaigns for each new drug are also counted as costs of development.
Oh and then there is the issue of previously developed drugs where they claim huge research costs as well because it was brought back to market.
And one can not forget the care shown to sick people around the globe by pharma's CEOs...
We made the drug for rich people not the poor!
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140124/09481025978/big-pharma-ceo-we-develop-drugs-rich-westerners-not-poor.shtml

Heaven forbid that sick people get treatment, we've got rich westerners to think about... not stopping disease.

No magic bullet.

[westlake]

There is no quick, cheap, safe path to the development of a new drug.

Someone has to pay the bill.

Glaxo spent more than $350 million over 25 years to develop [a malaria] vaccine for military personnel and travelers and expects to invest an additional $260 million to complete development. But Glaxo was reluctant to pay for pediatric trials in impoverished nations on its own, so the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided $200 million through the nonprofit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative to drive development and testing over the finish line.

Hope for a Malaria Vaccine [Oct 1013]

Re:No magic bullet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, just like the Offit poop drug its a drug looking to make money off the suffering of a poor third world country instead of just working towards having better standards of living for all. You do realize that Bill is still expecting to get paid by those third world countries in exchange for his "investment".

Bad either way...

[frank_adrian314159]

I am not a shill for the drug companies by any means. That being said, I think the third world's energies would be better spent dealing with their quality issues before they got butt hurt over this move by big pharma's lobby. In reality, drugs sourced from India and/or China are a crap shoot. Read Derek Lowe's blog "In the Pipeline" for information on this industry and pharmacological chemistry.

Yes, India may be getting unfairly punished for it's ability to manufacture drugs inexpensively, but unfair things go on all the time - just look at Slashdot beta!

Re:Bad either way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, India may be getting unfairly punished for it's ability to manufacture drugs inexpensively, but unfair things go on all the time - just look at Slashdot beta!

Just because unfair things go on all the time doesn't mean we should be silent and accept them.

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[dmbasso]

I love how pointing out greed can be interpreted as communism. Gotta admire Faux News & co. brainwashing efficiency.

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[lgw]

Gray markets are a real problem though. People in the US already buy drugs from India, and someone has to pay for drug research. (Of course, a true communist would reply: it will be free, because taxes will pay for it.)

Re:BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[Uberbah]

Wow. I hate to be the guy asking "why is this on Slashdot", but WTF? This is a purely political click-trolling story. This is not what Slashdot is for.

I don't hate to be the guy to ask you, but did you really just fall off the turnip truck? This is a story on drug patents. Slashdot runs stories on patents and greedy companies extracting money from them allllll the fucking time, and twice on Thursdays.

Gleevec history two views

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.lymphomainfo.net/lifestyle/leukemia/novartis-gears-up-to-showcase-us-health-care-shortcomings
vs
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlangreth/2010/08/09/gleevec-inventor-why-arent-there-more-cancer-cures/

Which more-represents 'objective' reality? Personally, I am more inclined to cynicism...

Wrong

[justthinkit]

Wrong. It is still used.

Re:Cheaper drugs are the way to go, not newer more

[Anonymous Coward]

In the short run, you are right, but what about the longer term? If the trade off truly is research pace vs. accessibility, then over time we will fall decades behind where we would have been and diseases that would be treatable cheaply with drugs whose patents would have expired by then may not have any treatment at all.

Re:Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India

[Rich0]

For the most part the online pills are as genuine as the stuff on thepiratebay. Sure, you can get burned either way, but it usually works (granted, being burned by counterfeit drugs is a much more serious problem).

The issue is that just as with thepiratebay somebody needs to actually pay to make the drugs. I'm all for that being the NIH or whatever, but right now very little is spent on drug clinical trials by anybody other than pharma companies. We need to change that if we really want to have a different business model. The thing is, if we do change that then there is no need to get rid of patents or whatever, because the patents will all be owned by the government anyway and it can license them out freely.

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[dmbasso]

someone has to pay for drug research. (Of course, a true communist would reply: it will be free, because taxes will pay for it.)

Indeed, someone has to pay for gram-negative antibiotics research urgently. Gee, I wonder why no big-pharma company is researching it.[/sarcasm]

Re:Horses for Courses

[Anonymous Coward]

All Horse Meat is in the Super Market

No! They sell it in Ikea, too. It's good. It's like beta-meat. I invite you to try some from a tube.

So

[geekoid]

they make a slightly altered version. The other version would still be available to use.

Of course your claim doesn't really happen, and it shows you don't know anything about patents especially regarding pharmaceuticals.

Here, this may help you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this. It does happen and they are educating companies on how to do it.

http://www.biopharminternational.com/biopharm/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=150834

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the one who doesn't have a clue what he is talking about when it comes to pharmaceuticals. These companies make bullshit changes to their drugs all the time in an effort to keep the patents going, then they pay kickbacks or other enticements to doctors to make sure they are prescribing the new versions.

You're either a schill for these companies or a fucking idiot. Do a google search for "Evergreening".

Stop telling people they don't know what they are talking about when you're the one with no fucking clue, ok?

Re:So

[LurkerXXX]

Nothing stops doctors around the world from prescribing the generic version of the old forumulation, of for you to ask your doctor for the generic of the old formulation.

People with bad doctors, and that don't bother checking if a generic version of the drug is available get ripped off, but the rest of the people in the world can get along just fine.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

"then they pay kickbacks or other enticements to doctors to make sure they are prescribing the new versions."
No shit.
I almost lost it a couple years ago.. I had a very uncomfortable and potentially serious medical issue and had to see a specialist. I was waiting and waiting to see the doc, went up and asked again, "I'm sorry, he should be with you soon". I was the only person there waiting and already had to wait a couple of weeks to even see him. I felt like total shit.
Finally out comes the doc all smiling and chatting with a fucking phama slut. Have you seen these whores? "Pharmaceutical Representatives"
The young blond 20 something cheerleader type in a one size too small black skirt 3 inches above the knee, tight white button down blouse with all the buttons open down to the very middle of her push-up bra showing ample cleavage with her little black phama roller suitcase rolling behind her as she slinked down the hallway clicking here 4 inch heels.
"Well, thanks greg, hope you can make it to our golf tournament next week!"
"Sure thing Christy! Always nice talking with you!"

Fucking shit.
Make an actual sick human wait for 45 minutes so you can get a hummer from a cheap whore in a nice suit. All you have to do is sell your soul.. And the new SuperExfexor Byphoforhumerate in 20mg doses.. Please come to our next sponsored golf outing! Door prizes and a chance to win a new bag of clubs!

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

I know.. It is almost like regular people out there think they can get away with not going to 7+ years of medical school and simply trust an expert to do what is in the best interest of the patient. What the fuck? Obviously health care is something that you can only do for yourself and if you die or go bankrupt because you don't know the difference between a stint and a bypass you deserve it.

I know whenever someone asks me to fix a computer I always tell them they need a new one. Of course by law only I, a certified IT professional can write them a script for a new PC, and I always choose the one that costs $5,000.. Because otherwise Dell wont send a cheap whore to invite me to the free sponsored event down on the island. It does not matter that really all I nneeded to do was take the usb thumb drive out it was trying to boot with.. New PC's are the best return for me. Sure, once in a while some cheap-ass will ask me if there is something less cost effective for the care of their PC, but then I tell them I am writing a VB GUI to trace the IP addresses, and that it would probably start fire and kill their children.
They usually just take the prescription for the new PC.

Then freaking leave

[geekoid]

whiner.

And it's still harmless.

[geekoid]

Dumb shits.

Re:And it's still harmless.

[Reziac]

Didn't someone work up numbers comparing the amount in a typical vaccine or whatever, to the amount of mercury you'd get from, say, a can of tuna or a serving of any ocean fish? I seem to recall the edible had many times the amount of mercury, and of course you're far more likely to repeat-dose that tuna sandwich.

Trust Pig Pharma?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Paul "Profit" Offit got his "poop" vaccine added to the CDC list of recommended chilhood vaccines while he was in a powerful position at the CDC. Pig Pharma is not to be trusted. The first few deaths of young girls from gardasil shuld have put a stop to that drug. The days of ultruistic scientists(if there ever was such a time) looking for ways to protect the world are gone. The idea of vaccines is not bad per se , but the current moral and ethical state of the worldwide Pharmacutical industry means there will be no vaccines going anywhere near my kids.

pharma spin

[Anonymous Coward]

"big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs"

How many of them are derivatives of existing drugs introduced just for patenting? According to Dr. Marcia Angell, they constituted about 77% of all approved drugs in 1998-2002.

"the U.S. government and private companies spent a combined $130 billion (PDF) on medical research."

The referenced paper gives a break down: only $37B comes from pharmaceutical companies, $32B comes from biotechnology and medical technology companies, the rest mostly from the government.

How does it compare with marketing spending? A random bit: $33B for R&D and $25B for marketing in 2004, with some essentially marketing activities labeled as "doctor education".

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[maynard]

(Of course, a true communist would reply: it will be free, because taxes will pay for it.)

Taxes have nothing to do with communism. In a communism all productive assets is owned by the state. That means farmland, power plants, factories, and all deeded property. Personal property is excluded; the state doesn't care about your model train collection.

Intellectual property would fall under state deeded property just as housing does. That's because only the state manages property deeds and assigns ownership. That the ownership is automatically assigned to the state merely simplifies bureaucratic administrative overhead. The state might be inefficient in aggregate, but not so in the Registration of Deeds office.

I know it's nit picky, but your statement conflates that communist system with every other government system imagined. Every government that has existed taxed its citizens to provide for a common good. Governments tax to build roads, bridges, schools, military and police departments. New research and development is funded through education grants. For example: the internet. Also: medical research. In fact, a lot of tax money is spent on drug development.

Perhaps you think government shouldn't do these things. Some even think government should be abolished. But to argue the abolishment of government on the pretense that taxes equals communism mixes terms and beliefs such that the rationale is nothing more than nonsense. It's no argument. It's not anticommunist or pro-USA or holds any ideological consistency.

sigh

[geekoid]

"The problem for the devil's argument is that Pharma spends double the amount on advertizing that they do on research. "
nope.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma...

Re:sigh

[TheGratefulNet]

you quote FORBES to tell us that we should be thankful and grateful for the generosity of Pharma?

since when is forbes speaking for the little guy? they are whores to big business and anything they say should be assumed to be highly biased.

its pretty well known that pharma wastes more money (ads) than they use for real research. and, a lot of research is done at universities, where we have already funded!

Re:sigh

[pepty]

Pharma spending isn't a teeter totter between marketing and R&D. To a first approximation the more a pharma spends on marketing the more money it has available for R&D.

Universities do great research on drug targets and tool compounds, but don't actually research new drugs that much, at least not compared to biotech/Pharma. That said, about 20-25% of new drugs are invented in universities.

Re:sigh

[mvdwege]

I don't. Why don't you provide a link to said debunking?

Re:sigh

[Maxo-Texas]

Yup..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

"Pharmaceutical Companies Spent 19 Times More On Self-Promotion Than Basic Research: Report "

Re:sigh

[Reziac]

I'd guess that's actually low compared to a lot of industries, and not out of line for other industries that rely to some extent on R&D -- like those two great analogy markets, cars and computers.

I'd guess, frex, the fast food industry spends thousands of times as much money on promotion as they do on R&D.

Re:sigh

[Maxo-Texas]

Typical advertising budgets are 6 to 8 % of gross sales.

GlaxoSmithKline spent $2.5 billion on gross sales of 28.37B or about 9%.
Budgets for other pharma companies were in line with this.

This does not include free samples- that comes from another part of the budget that's not easy to break out.

So it's a bit on the high side.

Interestingly, executive compensation seems low (about 4 million GBP for the ceo and 10 million GBP for the top executives as a group) and is reported to be ~40% lower for the chief executive this year. Perhaps they have a new president.

The research budget appears to be (I can only get 2009 numbers) about 5 billion. There's a relative cut of 500 million in 2012 when they laid off 1800 employees (which they called an "overhang from the 1980s" which sounds to me like they fired a lot of senior staff) but they don't say what amount the 500 million was cut from.

So it looks like they spend about 18% to 20% of their budget on research and half that amount on advertising.

That's just what

[geekoid]

Big Apathy want's you to do!

No No No No No drugs from India

[clovis]

The big problem is that some pharma manufacturers in India make crap.
They know they're making crap and they're proud of it.
Ripping people off is part of business culture everywhere, but they don't seem to make a distinction between cheating people out of their money and cheating them out of their lives.

The problem is that everyone knows they're making crap in India, but no one can come right out and say it because lawyers will be all over whoever says it. regardless of proven past practices.

Here's an example of what's being said and not being said.
Read this first, a government statement:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Then read this to see what really happened:
http://features.blogs.fortune.... (The HIV drug part of the story is about halfway down)

Re:No No No No No drugs from India

[Bert64]

but they don't seem to make a distinction between cheating people out of their money and cheating them out of their lives

There isn't really a difference... If someone doesn't have money then you can't cheat it out of them, so the western companies will quite happily let such people suffer and die.

Except

[geekoid]

it isn't an important message.
This is a web site, and people are intentionally polluting the comments.
I wonder if they boycott their favorite restaurant when they change the carpet?

Beta rules, I'd never go back to classic

I wish I had access to the /. database. I want to see how many people posting have even looked at it, and I want to see hom man of these AC come from the same IP.

Re:Except

[Khyber]

"Beta rules, I'd never go back to classic"

Try the same site when you're stuck on 1024x768. It's fucking unusable.

Even more so on mobile phones.

Paid shill much?

Re:Except

[mark-t]

I agree.with your sig... complaining about beta is pointless. But to be honest, I really don't like it that much. and I think yours is the very firs post I've ever seen here that actually had something genuinely positive to say about it. I have no doubt there are probably others, but I can't think of any I've personally seen.

Speaking for myself, the ability to review your recent posts and see at aa glance how they've been moderated, if at all, and how many responses they have produced is seriously lacking in beta, IMO.

Also, beta forces the entire website into what feels like a relatively narrow column that doesn't expand directly with window size, instead filling up the sides with useless gray space that just gets wider and wider as you drag the window wider. This ui design reduces the amount of useful content visible on screen at one time, which makes the website less useable for people who may have disabilities and want to minimize the amount of scrolling.they do. I get that the site needs updating... and there are a couple of changes that I would chooseto make to the classic interface if I could, but the way things are in the beta right now... it really feels like they're just going to kill the usefulness of the site... and it really feels like management isn't actually listening to what people really want, so I can empathize with the feelings of the people who are complaining about it incessantly, even if I don't empathize with their methods of showing it.

sigh

[geekoid]

You know those article have been debunked, right?

Re:Horses for Courses

[davester666]

Sorry, this isn't a story about the UK.

Example you should keep your eye on.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been relatively healthy most of my life, now that I'm 37 various things are failing and I have a chronic condition that I was prescribed Doxycycline developed/approved originally in 1967; It is the definition of 'out of patent'/generic.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxycycline

I am Canadian but TRY to live as cheaply as possible so I can remain out of that cold or bug ridden place for as long as possible, and being that this is a drug I am likely to routinely purchase I did some checking.
For 20 100mg tablets/capsules of Doxycycline(10 days worth):
At drug stores in SW Florida(Walmart included) it was $110 ; cheapest-$125.
In Nova Scotia, the first/only place I checked: $25.00
And out of curiosity I found it as a Bird Anti-biotic in the USA for about $17 shipped(all be it a 'different salt', same drug, quality would need to be verified).
http://www.calvetsupply.com/product/1716/Antibiotics

So even without IP protections the retailers or distributors or SOMEONE is really screwing over basic meds for Americans.

Everyone in America is all about 'free market', but it's not free when laws restrict new/outside players and it is my opinion that the US has the 'best healthcare in the world; if your rich enough to afford insurance that won't get canceled when you get sick', I think some serious price regulation on all 'standard drugs and procedures' would transform the American system to the envy of the world, not just for whos rich enough.
Example: Regulate pricing, instead of hospitals being able to charge 'whatever they want' for a bed, cap it(Canadian system limit is $535/night, I've seen friends/family charged $3000+/night in the USA). X-regulated price for X procedure.

This would allow the filthy rich to still receive extra ordinary care to extend their lives, but stop feeding the beast for 'basic healthcare' for the rest of us.

Re:what's the percentage of drug research by the u

[Anonymous Coward]

That is pretty much what drug companies do. Piggy back on the work of Stanford, John Hopkins et al.

Bull sh*t on OP

[CuteSteveJobs]

> But don't forget that big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs. In 2012 alone, the U.S. government and private companies spent a combined $130 billion (PDF) on medical research."

That is not true. That research is done in universities often with taxpayer money and big pharma snaps it up for a song. Watch Big Bucks, Big Pharma https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... or read Marcia Angell - The Truth About the Drug Companies, Ben Goldacre - Bad Pharma - How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients, Irving Kirsch The Emperor's New Drugs Exposed (SSRIs) and Jacky Kaw - Big Pharma - Exposing the Global Health Industry Agenda.

Outsourcing...

[bayankaran]

Corporates have no problem when outsourcing is cheaper to their bottom line...the same drug companies which want US to take punitive action against India will have the their IT operations outsourced to India as its cheaper.
They want it both ways...pure psychopathic behavior.
Here is the exact quote from Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers...âoeWe did not develop this product (Nexavar) for the Indian market, letâ(TM)s be honest. We developed this product for western patients who can afford this product, quite honestly, it is an expensive product.â
Poor Indians should die. If this is not psychopathic behavior I don't know what is! This guy needs help.
And don't tell me "it costs a lot to develop these drugs". Yes, it does and the costs are recovered with sufficient profit margin from the first world.

Re:Outsourcing...

[Bert64]

It's clearly not an expensive product as the indians are able to manufacture it cheaply enough. They're just gouging those who can afford it, and want anyone who can't afford to be gouged to suffer and die.

Re:Outsourcing...

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't tell me "it costs a lot to develop these drugs". Yes, it does and the costs are recovered with sufficient profit margin from the first world.

Why should we in the West subsidise the bacterium-like population growth of third world shitholes? So those same psychopathic CEO's have more choice over who to outsource your ass to?

In My Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

pharmaceutical companies should all be non-profits by law. Medicine is a basic human right. Pharm companies should make enough to pay reasonable salaries, conduct R&D, and operate. Pharm ads should be illegal like they are in EU and Asia. Healthcare and profit are not a good combination. Profit is not a reason to be involved in medicine and those who are are morally bankrupt. Companies and medical professionals should never be making a profit off the backs of their patients. Full stop. I am very disappointed that we in the US are not recipients of a single-payer healthcare system already. And why not? Because the right think healthcare should be profitable for someone. They have already lost the argument on moral grounds.

Re:In My Opinion

[Bert64]

Mostly agreed, although i think pharm companies should just be manufacturing, with the formulae being readily available so that there is competition among manufacturing drugs.
Research should be done by non profits (charities and nationalised health departments etc), if you allow for-profit companies to do research then you have a conflict of interest as they will always design treatments to maximise profits rather than for maximum benefit to the patient - eg keeping someone sick and treating their symptoms indefinitely is more profitable than curing them.

Re:In My Opinion

[Yaotzin]

I'm not sure I agree but I'm not wading into the quagmire that is morality right now. I just wanted to add that all pharm ads are not illegal in Europe, just the prescription drugs. Which is as it should be. Patients with little or no understanding of their treatment cannot be expected to be able to choose correctly their own medication. Especially if their knowledge stems from whether the TV said this or that drug is pretty good or not. Rx drugs require a prescription for a good reason, these are serious forces we are messing with. A single-payer healthcare system would do you good from an economical point of view though, since a larger purchasing entity can demand better prices from the private sector.

Re:In My Opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

No human right should cost another human anything. In this way no right can grant anyone any physical item at the expense of another. So you're wrong.

Just add region codes

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem solved!

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[Anonymous Coward]

"suck Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow's cocks some more,"

That just has to be the funniest thing said on Slashdot since this whole Beta argument started.

Rachel Maddow is a lesbian, not a transexual. Maybe if you hate LGBTs so much you should move to Soviet Russia.

And she didn't invent the Faux News label, AFAIK it was Keith Olberman, well before he got Rachel a job on MSNBC

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of the expense, and focus, of drug research of the US is on new patents, not on new treatments.

Let me take you a visit to the world of patent history: Welcome to insulin, which was released *with a free patent* because of its discoverer's desire to help humanity, immediately. The *refinement* and processing of insulin has, fortunately for profits, been filled with many patentable processes. Business has benefited, and there have actually been useful improvements in its purity, which helps prevent allergic reactions, and its price. The original refinement from slaughterhouse fetuses, to avoid contamination by pancreatic juices, was effective but unsustainable as we diabetics survived longer and became a larger market. Refinement from pancreases from adult slaughterhouse animals filled the supply, and was very profitable for decades.

But the last round of significant patents was running out. Factories worldwide were geared up to operate, outside the control of the Eli Lilly company, and to halve the price of insulin. What to do, what to do? Wait! We can patent *human* insulin! By first modifying animal insulin with new ly patented enzyme treatments, and by eventually using genetically modified e.coli to produce it without animals, we now have "pure human" insulin, to the benefit of diabetics worldwide! It's human insulin, what could be better?

The answer is that almost all other sources of insulin better. Human insulin is faster acting, but that's pointless when you're wearing an insulin pump and the updake is much faster *anyway*. The claims about animal insulin leading to insulin resistance or allergy were due to the *impurities*, which are almost nonexistent in modern processing of animal insulins. And human insulin actually contributes to hypoglycemic unawareness which gave me one heck of a time when I couldn't get animal insulin anymore. (I tried!) Human insulin does not provide a single benefit over animal insulin to its users, and the deficits are very real. Other fast acting insulin mixtures, have been available for *decades, and long acting versions for different shot based insulin treatments. They're now all now replaced by "human" insulins that are roughly twice the price, even with inflation

So as a diabetic who's faced this sort of thing, the "Big Pharma" companies can go play "Rites of Spring" on my !@#$. They've demonstrated that they prefer profits on new and actively inferior patent-ptoected products over the health and safety of millions of medication who absolutely require this medication. I cut companies like Lilly *no* slack in legislation or in the courts or in global treaties. They've abused us for decades, and I hope their leadership rots.

Nothing new to Big Pharma

[Anonymous Coward]

They dislike anything that prevents them from making billions of dollars from the suffering of humanity. Even the pills they prescribe to cure you of your ailments, usually cause further unrelated ailments.

Why else would medications such as Champix/Chantix still be allowed on the market, despite the FDA giving it a "black label" rating. While it may help some people quit smoking, it has caused others to have uncontrollable rage issues, and even suicides.

LOL.

[WindBourne]

Big pharma is worried about India, when in fact, they should be concerned about CHina. Far more theft occurs there then elsewhere.

Re:quash the beta u fuckin homothugs

[db10]

Wiggidy wack or the regular kind?

sorry, but no. Patents do not work that way.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is a common tactic of drug manufacturers as their patents run our they suddenly find a way to color it pink or something equally trivially unimportant change and try to start the patent clock all over. This is a total subversion of the purpose behind patents."

It's also a complete and total load of nonsense that you've pulled out of your backside.

if they paint it pink, then they get a new patent on the new pink version. the old white version is passed along to the public domain on schedule.

i can't even imagine what your motivation was for posting something so blatantly incorrect and misleading.

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[tragedy]

...someone has to pay for drug research...

Well, that $130 Billion works out to about $415 per person in the US. Government and charaties and the like paid about half of that and "industry" paid the other half. Total healthcare spending from that same PDF was $2,939 Billion (although those numbers are a bit confusing because it seems to include the money industry spent on the research added to the amount industry was paid by patients). In any case, that's about $9390 per person in the US, or around 45 times the amount industry spent on research. So, if a few percent of total healthcare spending goes towards the pharm/biotech/medical devices industry, they're doing just fine. Also the answer to who is paying for medical research is that the taxpayers and patients are. Frankly, if you look at the math, it's pretty ridiculous. If half of the research costs aren't going to be paid by industry anyway, and it's such a small fraction of the total healthcare costs, why not just double or triple what the government is paying for research and stop giving a cent of it to for profit industries. Then, do all the research through public research institutions and relegate industry to a manufacturing role. Let them all be 'generic' manufacturers competing on production of the same drugs. In the meantime the few extra percent that would raise total healthcare expenditure by would be offset by the much larger drop in healthcare spending due to the fact that a bunch of artificial monopolies just vanished.
Now, I know it's tragic that people who didn't pay might also benefit from this research. Even worse than the people in other countries are the untold future generations of humans who will also benefit with better health and happier lives without paying for it. Bunch of filthy freeloading descendants.

Taxes already pays for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Taxes already pays for all drug research. The Medicare/Medicaid drug reimbursement budget is larger than the cost of all private drug research plus reasonable production costs.

Thank heavens we have ObamaCare

[Anonymous Coward]

This is part of why ObamaCare was passed - the government is going to regulate the prices of pharmaceuticals and services to be drastically lower. #ThanksObama

Re:Thank heavens we have ObamaCare

[Anonymous Coward]

ACA has nothing to do with drug prices. All it does is makes sure that everybody has insurance, either by work, making you pay for it, or covering you by medicaid. The only ones not covered, should be illegals.
Sadly, idiots like you should be allowed to die.

Good for India

[Bert64]

It's good to see a government actually putting the interests of its people (millions of them) above that of a few rich business owners...

It's a choice between a bit less profit for some rich drug companies, or millions of people suffering and dying, because these people simply cannot afford what the drug companies are trying to charge.

The whole idea of people profiting from human suffering is utterly abhorrent.
As for research, research of this kind by for-profit companies is a huge conflict of interest - they don't want to cure people as thats not very profitable, they want to sell more drugs so their research is always going to focus on ways to reduce the symptoms while leaving the underlying problem so that the patient has to keep taking the drugs for as long as possible.

These companies should be reduced to pure competitive manufacturing, and research should be conducted by non profits - charities and government health departments, with the results being openly shared. The amount of money saved by the UK NHS alone would pay for a lot of research, and this would be pure research not "a little research and a lot of profit skimmed off the top".

Re:Cheaper drugs are the way to go, not newer more

[Bert64]

What do you think will happen to all the money that gets saved because competition among manufacturers has pushed the price of drugs right down? It's not going to disappear...
A lot of research isn't conducted by pharma companies anyway, its done by universities, charities and government funded healthcare systems... And those government funded healthcare systems will have more money to spend on research if they're spending less of it on buying drugs.

Also you will see better results, because the goal of the research will be "how can we better treat patients" and not "how can we make the most profit"... A for-profit company wants to keep you sick and treat the symptoms so they can extract rent from you for the rest of your life, a publicly funded healthcare system wants to cure you and keep you healthy so you demand less of their resources.

Fuck beta

[isorox]

It's worse than the original, and that's impressive

FuckBeta

[MrL0G1C]

There won't be a decent place to "get back to discussing real issues?" if slashdot Beta goes ahead.

"reams of whiny butthurt "

"you crybabies"

"You're like those Hollywood cokebrains"

Yeah, fuck you too.

Compete or die

[erikmartino477]

Thats hos capitalism works. A protected home market has made them fat and unable to compete in the lower end of the market.

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why the profit motive is just a hindrance against progress.

All the propaganda, which says that without the profit motive things will not happen, is laughable.

Now, consider that the profit motive is one of the basis axioms for capitalism as an economic system. The profit motive is also false, as demonstrated by the previous poster. Question: does capitalism actually work to benefit everyone or is it just a way to create a rich elite? Discuss.

Save Our Business Model!!!

[erroneus]

So when ordinary US people cry out saying "They're taking our jobs!!" People respond with "get a better one!" But when big business says "They're taking our sales!!!" what happens? THIS. Imperialism.

GRAS

[GoodBuddy]

So the Federal Govrnment is issuing patents on drugs that have been deamed Generally Recognized as Safe for decades. These drugs have not been through clinical trials to determine if there are negative health effects. This is one more way in which the government drives up healt care costs. Big-Pharma is freaking out because the patents on many of their cash cows are getting ready to rexpire. They already get extensions on these patents from the FDA. Meanwhile, the drugs we really need, like new classes of anti-biotics, are being ignored. You may recall that at the start of the Gulf War Congress want the drug companies to develop drugs in case the enemy used chemical or biological weapons. Congress guaranteed that they would make a 10% ptofit on their effort. Big Pharma said no, not unless you give us 30% return, which is what they have come to expect. They only want to develop drugs for chronic conditions, not cures. Intellectual property laws are meant to benefit the people. The monopolies that the government gives are not some god-given right but are done so because they benefit the public. I suspect if the government abolished drug patents and paid all of the costs of research the public would benefit more than the current system.

Phages maybe the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

http://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2012/04/are-phages-the-answer.html

dear big pharma

[Anonymous Coward]

your american patents hold no value in india where you are subject to THEIR LAWS and THEIR POLICY.. not usa's...

your overpaid lobbyist army cannot reach india. tough shit. maybe you should i dunno, lower prices a bit? hmmm? quit spending billions advertising in mass media? hmmm? quit providing kickbacks to doctors that write scripts for your products? hmmm? quit fudging data to get new product approved---only to get nailed by lawsuits and recall later? hmmm? and quit soaking so much money into your lobbyist army and stuffing so much money into lawmaker's pockets? hmmm?

stop all public funds

[sixsixtysix]

Stop any and all public funding (either money from research grants or data from publicly funded universities) that helps these monsters and make them pay their own way 100%. This should be applied to all areas of medicine.

Re:stop all public funds

[Khashishi]

The current system is too big, that any significant changes are impossible or will take a long time to effect.

Re:Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India

[Reziac]

ALL those drugs for Fido are made in the same factory, from the same materials, in the very same BATCH, as the human drugs. The only real difference is that the product labeled for animals doesn't carry the huge lawsuit liability risk. If you take aspirin labeled for humans and die, you might have a case in court. If you take aspirin labeled for animals and die, you used it off-label and that's your problem.

comments don't load in this beta

[kbx911]

big fail

Re:Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India

[Khashishi]

Maybe we should be giving antidepressants to pigs, given the lack of love and exercise they receive at the farm.

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[leslie.satenstein]

One has a humanitarian decision, let people die or remain chronically ill or allow exorbitant amount / fees to pharmaceutical trojians to respond to greed.

Re:BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[spectrumlogic]

I think it's interesting you don't see the correlation between scale and prevalence of discussion...particularly under a semi-rude, off-topic header originating in the latest wave of disruptive activism. Asking yourself if your post is part of the problem is a very important introspective loop employed by those who prize their relevance...otherwise motive comes into play...but only just ahead of integrity.

"We want all the money"

[Anonymous Coward]

That is all I read in U.S drug companies' statements. Good job, India! Keep the U.S companies at bay.

The FDA is owned by industry...

[ToddInSF]

Your absolute faith in the incorruptibility of the FDA runs contrary to the reality.

Having said that, completely getting rid of all oversight and regulation is truly an idiotic suggestion. The people that make these suggestions are actually THE problem.

If something doesn't work, you fix it. You don't just toss it in the garbage.

You fix something that's broken by identifying what's wrong with it.

People who suggest simply disposing of all regulatory agencies and replacing them with nothing are people who simply can not be trusted to fix anything. They work for the status quo just as surely as the lobbyists for the status quo do.

It's a method that works great in the US. Constantly distract from what the real problem is so that people with a vested financial interest in hurting everybody can simply continue business as usual, with their same tired saggy old cheerleaders shouting "yay team".

Re:The FDA is owned by industry...

[icebike]

Your absolute faith in the incorruptibility of the FDA runs contrary to the reality.

I have no such absolute faith.
However, I have even less faith in allowing big pharma govern itself.

Sad really

[Virtucon]

I realize that Big Pharma have a vested interest in their bottom lines but they also are allowed lengthy patents on all of their products, essentially giving them license to print money for years. India on the other hand has no interest in paying for patents when they have millions of people who can benefit from the medications that Big Pharma have produced. That's wrong too and two wrongs don't make a right.

I mean, you can get tons of generic medications, made in India, from all kinds of third party pharmacies all over the world. It's great for the consumer but it undermines IP rights and the research investments that Big Pharma make. Does this hurt Big Pharma? Well yes but I don't see any of them going bankrupt and only in nations where they're allowed to have a monopoly, like the US, would they not be more amenable to reducing their pricing structure? Last year it was reported that just on Medicare in the US Big Pharma netted $711 Billion in profits. That's not exactly going broke.

Why? Well the ACA didn't touch Big Pharma nor did it open the doors and allow more generics to be imported, that was a back room deal but it still remains that while they should be allowed to protect their IP, they shouldn't be allowed to charge outrageous, over-the-top prices for what they produce. Some of these companies even charge less for the same product in other nations than they do in the US. They even have gone so far as to sue Maine for allowing Candian pharmacy imports. If we're going to start reducing healthcare costs worldwide we have to start addressing Big Pharma and their political influence and to come to an understanding that they can't just live off the the ills of the people they're supposed to help. If we could get to that level, then there wouldn't be the need for $15,000 injections nor the need for India to circumvent intellectual property rights to keep their citizens alive nor for everybody else to pay outrageous prices for medications which improve the quality of life.
     

Good job

[ToddInSF]

People need to follow the money.

And stop being so damn gullible.

Looking back over the last 2 decades at what drugs cost to develop, and at how many people are on prescription drugs, and at how much is spent advertising directly to patients new drugs with profound side effects and little to no long term testing, how can anyone come to the conclusion that medical care in the US is superior in any way ?

Oh yeah, marketing and big pharma lobbyists, and a mainstream media that is essentially owned by the drug companies.

When was the last time a major network even did any kind of expose or reporting on big pharma ?

Peter Jennings did a thing on the Statin disaster a LONG time ago, and that's the last time I remember seeing anyone question the insane and reckless US system of pharmacopoeia propaganda.

Where are the major breakthroughs that translate into anything substantial ?

Not exactly...

[Anonymous Coward]

A generic drug manufacturer is like a company that packages and distributes free software. It may not have any new code of its own to make available, but it performs a service nonetheless.

-Gareth

Big Pharma

[Anonymous Coward]

gosgog:

I found this interesting, they publish the amount in Billions that the Pharma world in the U.S., spends to develop new Medicines....BUT they don't show the Billions & Billions, this Pharma world makes in Real Profit, over and above the cost of research, marketing, production and Distribution.
In relation to this I retired here in a small S.E.Asian country, in order to live on my Social Security money. Back in '97 & 98, prescription meds were available here at low cost. Then the local Pharma industry convinced Congress to cancel the Indian imports. Med's went SKYHI....so couple of years later Congress thrashed out a bill to reduce cost in Meds...Ha! Ha!...The Indian Meds were cheaper in Peso....the local Meds cheaper in centavos! So things are stil Skyhi!

Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[tragedy]

I might be misunderstanding you, but it sounds like you're suggesting that you either need to have no new medicines and let people remain sick, or you have to allow monopoly rents to be extracted from the sick. The entire point of my post was that such an idea is a false dichotomy. The amount spent paying for the products of medical research is so much more than the amount spent researching them that additional tax money could be spent on the medical research with control of the results going back to the taxpayers who paid for it rather than private, profit-seeking entities. The cost to the taxpayer would be greater on the research end, but the savings in medical expenditures would be greater still than the extra money spent on research.

And

[NewYork]

Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It'll be extremely costly.

Phage Therapy: Where communism succeeded...

[Paul Fernhout]

AC wrote: http://schaechter.asmblog.org/...

Communist! :-)
"Keith Rankin's Thursday Column - Where communism succeeded and capitalism failed"
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories...
"The programme revealed that we - ie humankind - had discovered a superior cure (to antibiotics) for bacterial infections around the same time that penicillin was being discovered. The research programme on bacteriophages (phages for short) began in Stalin's Georgia in the 1930s. To this day, our knowledge of each of the many thousands of phage viruses remains concentrated in a now rundown laboratory in Tbilisi, Georgia. The arrival of capitalism in the Caucuses threatens a repository of knowledge, built up over 50 years, that could prevent the superbug pandemic that threatens us all next century. ...
    Western capitalism has another kind of correctness that can be at least as disabling; a correctness based on profit, and an unwillingness to check the growth of an industry that is too lucrative to too many people. The story of antibiotics is becoming one of those stories. ...
    Another problem is that western capitalism is too much entwined in the English language. The literature on phage remedies was mostly in Russian. It's hard enough to get Anglo-Saxon western scientists to read in French, let alone Russian. After all, "reputable journals" are in English, are they no t?
    While there are some genuine reasons why phage treatments of bacterial diseases were overlooked in the 1930s and 1940s, the failure to develop a western research program into bacteriophage treatment in the 1980s and 1990s represents an inexcusable failure of western capitalism. By the 1980s, ther e could be no denial that antibiotic resistance was going to be a major problem in (if not before) the twentyfirst century. Yet, we just didn't want to know about what will probably turn out to be the most important medical breakthrough in the twentieth century; a breakthrough made in communist G eorgia, in Stalin's Soviet Union.
    It is embarrassing when western science is out-trumped, especially by the "communists". Usually, when out-trumped, we don't tell anyone. That's what happened here. Not only did we not have the nous to start a western programme in bacteriophage research; we looked the other way when the files of phials threatened to be destroyed following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and during the little reported civil war that engulfed Georgia a few years ago. So much for the knowledge economies of the west. How can such valuable knowledge be so cheap?
    It's not too late for western medicine to enter the post-antibiotic bacteriophage era. Our grandchildren will hardly thank us if we persevere with our corporate-profit-motivated conservatism.
    The Soviets were able, eventually, to admit that they were wrong to follow Lysenko. Will we in the west be equally able to admit that we were wrong to put all our medical eggs into the one antibiotic basket, in the process ignoring the most basic tenets of the theory of evolution?"

See also Dan Pink on true motivation via challenge, mastery, and purpose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

The US focus on organizing an economy more and more around "artificial scarcity" enforced by police, military, and political power is unlikely to end well...

Cheeper health care

[jbee02]

Cheeper drugs means cheeper health care. For allot of people that would make a huge difference. I know the situation isn't quite that sim, but i think we could make a huge leap in the nations if we reexamine the laws and regulation around the drug industry and figure out what can be done to drive prices done

Of course they are...

[JonSchneider]

India shows some semblance of common sense, and immediately Big Pharma has to come crying to lawmakers in Washington to cry about how they can't gouge the rest of the world and watch millions die without proper care because they need 4th and 5th beach homes.

Re:BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES

[strikethree]

And they're bullying a poor country like "hey, all these medicines that we were not going to sell because you can't afford, you are not allowed to make them yourselves; tell your population to just die."

See? This is what I do not get. If they were not going to be selling that stuff there, why do they care if it is manufactured and distributed locally. No money lost, right?