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

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: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?