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Why New Antibiotics Never Come To Market (vice.com)
citadrianne writes: New antibiotics are generated naturally over time by bacteria, as weapons in their ongoing chemical warfare against other microbes. Predicting where and when they can be found relies mostly on good fortune and following a hunch. Scientist Brian Murphy's hunch is that the bacteria which live on freshwater sponges could be a hive of new chemicals. "We don’t know a huge amount about these species," he said. "But the only way to find out if there’s anything there is by actually diving down there and carving them off with a knife." But even if these sponges yield the antibiotics of the future, there are seemingly endless roadblocks that prevent us from actually using them to cure disease. "We've discovered six antibiotics in the recent past," Professor William Fenical said. "Of those, three to four have serious potential as far as we know, including anthramycin. But we have no way to develop them. There are no companies in the United States that care. They're happy to sell existing antibiotics, but they're not interested in researching and developing new ones."
This is what happens when you allow sociopaths to run corporations. Sociopaths should, upon discovery, be forceably removed from society at gunpoint and sent to an island together where they can fuck each other, eat each other, or whatever it is these vile neurologically inhuman monsters do to each other. No sociopath should ever have control of even a single normal, empathic human being in even the tiniest way.,
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Pharma has to fund the clinical trials and going through the lengthy approval process, so they obviously deserve some profits from their efforts. Just don't jack the price into the stratosphere and tell us it's because of the cost of your research when you didn't come up with the drug in the first place.
atents exist (see Art. 1, Sec 8 of the US Constitution) to encourage science and the arts. Not to encourage profit.
That is a very odd statement. Patents encourage science and the arts by protecting profits.
So shorten the time that patents are in effect. When the old antibiotics become public domain there will be a strong incentive for the big rich pharma companies to invest in developing the new ones.
Where is the incentive? If they can still profit selling a branded antibiotic with a generic formula, they will do so. Tylenol is still sold even though you can buy cheaper generic acetaminophen.
The incentive to develop new drugs is only the profits the new drug can make. And shortening patent length on future drugs limits those profits. It won't stop drug development, but it certainly would reduce it. It may still be necessary to do this to make drugs cheaper, but that doesn't change the fact it would slow new drug development.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
but protecting profits is a _means_, not an _end_. In this case there is evidence that we're pushing the means to the detriment of the end.
It comes under taxing and spending for the general welfare.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Except "2005" was actually February 2007, "legally required" was an executive order issued by then-Governor Rick Perry ("individual liberty-R-us"), and the Texas legislature promptly overrode the executive order in June 2007 so that there never was any "legally required" vaccination for school attendance.
Moderated to +4 informative, yet almost completely wrong on the objectively veribiable information. I think I'll disregard your HPV treatment anecdote as well...
And the HPV vaccine came from Australian public reseach dollars, $$$$ pharma.
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My sister was part of a team that got a patent. The university where she worked shopped around for people that might be able to profit from the patent. Nobody bought it. It sat in the patent office until the patent expired. Now all people that could profit from the patent are free to do so without having to pay the university for the privilege. How do you prevent that from happening again?
Why do you think I am at all inclined to prevent it? They had 17 years to convince someone it was worth having and nobody agreed. Either it just wasn't as useful as they thought or the school wanted too much for it. So, how many are now using the patent without paying?
As for the rest, profit is one thing, but charging over a hundred dollars for a single pill that costs a dime to make is over the top. Gioving people the choice of everything you own or die is over the top. Evergreening and paying people to not compete are plain unethical and should be illegal.