Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
...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.
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?