Antibiotic Resistant Staph Antibiotic Discovered 493
edward.virtually@pob writes "CNN is reporting that a team of scientists has discovered an extremely effective killer of the antibiotic resistant form of staph infection occuring naturally in rock pools. Unfortunately, despite the obvious cheap potential availability of this cure, do not expect it to be cheaply available. The employer of the scientists, AquaPharm Bio-Discovery Limited, the story notes 'is keeping the identity of its MRSA-killing bacteria a closely guarded secret, and taken out patents on how they can be cultivated and used.' Oh well."
Be good, MRSA (Score:2, Informative)
There is in fact a perfectly good MRSA killer out there already - bleach. Not much use once you are infected, but an ounce of prevention, etc. Here in the UK we need the government to get hospitals to focus more on basic hygiene, rather then forcing them to hire more managers to figure out ways of fiddling the figures to meet the latest (meaningless) government target.
At least the government here have set themselves a goal of a 6% reduction in the number of targets set per year...
Re:Patenting.. (Score:4, Informative)
1 they are not patenting the bacteria, its identity is secret. therefore guess the bacteria and its yours legaly, steal the secret its not yours.
2 patents taken out cultivation, just use a different cultivation technic no problem.
3 patent taken out on use, probably no way around that one depending on for broad or narrow the patent is.
Aids has a cure it's death, that means AIDS is presently terminal. AIDS is also causative of death. Cold Sore are also terminal, but usualy doesn't cause death unless you have Aids also.
There are quite a few diseases that cause death more grusome than aids like Hepititis B, ever wonder why a Hepititus B vacination costs so much?
Nice editorializing (Score:5, Informative)
watch the hyphenation! (Score:3, Informative)
Its the same difference as 'Man eating shark' (in a restaurant) and 'Man-eating shark' (in trouble).
Baz
You don't understand patents (Score:3, Informative)
Disclaimer: The following applies to Canadian/US patent law. IANAUKL.
Patents cannot be granted for things occurring naturally in nature. There have been cases where researchers discovered a cure for a disease in nature, and spent millions of dollars trying to reproduce the substance synthetically. This is because they couldn't patent the original organic material, but they *could* patent a synthetic copy.
Secondly, part of patent law states that in being granted a patent, you must make the product available to the public at reasonable cost. The company that comes up with a cure for AIDS will not be granted a patent for the cure unless it is produced in a lab, and they will not be allowed to charge $200 a pill for it.
Patents are not as unbalanced as some people seem to think. They're actually a good thing. They drive research and provide incentive to invest in new medicines, while keeping the balance of ensuring such medicines will be accessible to all, not just the rich. Particularly here in Canada, where we have universal health care.
Re:Patenting.. (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
The real inventor of the Airbag was John Hetrick. he got the idea from Navy torpedo canvas inflation. He patented it around 1952. But the automakers stayed away from it because of the high cost (of manufacturing). In 1969 congress passed some legislation that forced seatbelts and also began work on legislation that required Airbags in a vehicles if a customer wanted them (ie, pay for them). That legislation went live in 1971. His patent expired in 1970, one year too early.
He died without making it rich on his ingenious life saving device.
The only inventive thing Mercedes did to (dramatically) change the safety of vehicles that I'm aware of, was to create crumple zones. Bela Barenyi (inventor of the Beetle... hail hitler) invented them in 1951 for Mercedes. It took them until 1980 to use them.
-Malakai
Re:Patenting.. (Score:2, Informative)
Sort of like, you've never seen a commercial for a machine to align your car, you just take the car to the mechanic. HE, however, probably *has* seen advertisments for these machines.
"Expensive" Research? Yes, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, it's not the public's fault if the facts are muddied. All too often, the media's brain-dead interpretation of "fairness" and "balance" consists of providing roughly equal time (or arguments of apparently roughly equal weight) even when that same outlet may already have thoroughly discredited a given argument. They are selling the appearance of fairness, after all. Actual fairness is as irrelevant as the *decrease* in aerodynamic performance caused by the rocket/jet fins and detailing of many cars in the 50/60's. Appearances are everything.
But to return to the pharmaceuticals companies: R+D is "a major expense" only after a tangled borderline perjurious accounting that was previously reserved for Ponzi schemes and the recording industry. Many of these ultra-expensive wonder drugs are sold for half as much in Canada, and a quarter the price or less in some parts of Europe, Asia or Africa. This wouldn't be the case if they were desperately trying to recoup genuine costs at their inflated US prices (because they'd be losing money on every non-US sale). They're just charging what the market will bear.
Further, as regards "innovation". Every week, I am bombarded by literally hundreds of ads (in medical journals, direct mailings an drug reps who barge in with no appointment, but are my sole source for "free samples" for my poor patients) for new wonderdrugs thhat are nothing more than 'me-too' knock-off. They move a hydroxyl group or a carbon atom on an existing drug, and run hundreds of tests (talk about expensive!) looking for some minute benefit over a current wonder drug (which they may also own). Almost invariably, the me-too is *less* effective or safe OVERALL than the existing drug (the lack of overall improvement is so consistent thatI sometimes think they're marketing the also-rans of the initial development effort - it would certainly be cheaper) Often the original 'wonder drug (progenitor of a new class) is itself only occassionally better than far cheaper and safer generic alternatives
Let me cite an example: in most cases, diuretics (drugs that cause you to urinate excess water) are both more effective and safer, at pennies a day, than Calcium Channel blockers and ACE (angiotensin convertine enzyme) inhibitors that cost several dollars a day -- for life! The study that proved this was one of the best and most unarguable in years, yet drug reps and execs will openly tell you that they aren't worried. "No one is pushing (marketing) cheap, safe diuretics which doctors have used for other purposes for centuries". Why do you think they market directly to patients? A few years ago, TVs and billboards were flooded with ads that didn't even specify what the drug was for, but urged "Ask your doctor". Perfectly healthy people came in, asking, afraid they were missing out on the Latest Greatest Thing.
Another example is the new anti-AIDS drug Fuzeon, widely hailed as an example of a drug whose high price ($20,570/yr = E19,000) is justified because it takes over 100 steps to prepare. Even if you accept their own figures justifying the cost, R+D was SFr 840 million ($620 million) and annual sales are projected to be $740 million per year, once hey hit full production (by which time, production costs are expected to be 10-15% of current levels)
Here are a couple of articles, for those who are still reading:
In U.S., marketing blurs into medicine [iht.com]
A more general analysis of the industry by the Markle Foundation [tnr.com] (health care advocates)
Sorry for the rant.
Re:Patenting.. (Score:2, Informative)
For example
1) The pharmaceutical industry is ranked as the most profitable industry by Fortune magazine. At the close of 2001, the top 14 pharmaceutical companies altogether made profits of $38 billion.
2) In 2001, pharmaceutical companies spent more than $2.6 billion to advertise their prescription drugs, according to Intercontinental Marketing Services. This is up from $1.8 billion in 1999.
3) Drug manufacturers consistently rank among the top two industry groups in money spent to lobby Congress. With more than 400 registered lobbyists -- nearly one for each of the 535 members of Congress -- the pharmaceutical industry spent nearly $97 million in 2000, according to records filed with the Secretary of the Senate and compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
That's just the money given to congresscritters, not for the lobbyists themselves.
4) Major drug makers spend nearly twice as much to advertise their medicines as to research and develop them, from Families USA.
For example, Merck & Co. netted $40.36 billion in sales in 2000. Of that amount, 17 percent was profit; 15 percent was spent on advertising, marketing and administration; and 6 percent was spent on research and development (SEC filings).
So don't go telling me how drug prices can't get any cheaper because of all the research money spent on them!
Yes, "litterally billions" of dollars are spent on research, but *THAT* is only a small portion of where the money you pay for drugs goes.
What you pay for is the pharmaceutical companies ability to maximize profits by having a single source of something that people need.
Which would you rather have? (Score:3, Informative)
Which would you rather have?
1) A cure for AIDS (or drug-resistant staph, or whatever fatal nastiness) that costs $500,000, and a lot of aids patients cured.
2) No cure for AIDS (or drug-resistant staph, or whatever fatal nastiness), and all of those patients dead.
You only get one. Because it costs many millions of dollars to hunt up a cure for anything. And once it's found, another $13 million (and rising) to get it approved by a bureaucracy that gets dinged big-time for approving a drug that harms a few people through side-effects but not for withholding one that would save 100,000 lives a year (example: Beta blockers for preventing second-and-fatal heart attacks.)
The bright side is that they're going to try to get as much money as possible from their drug once they have it. So they won't price it so high that only five patients can afford it. Fast nickles are better than slow dimes - so (as soon as a few rich ones have been soaked to get it early), they'll drop the price and sell it to a few thousand well-to-do, then again to get the insurance companies to declare it no longer experimental, then again to sell as much as they can to the people without insurance. And they'll sell 'em cheaper in poor countries (as soon as they've sold some to any rich rulers that need curing.) Meanwhile they'll donate some to charity clinics for a tax deduction based on the high price, and hand out physician samples (to physicians who will save 'em for the people who can't afford 'em because there aren't enough samples to cure everybody). (And there's a rare-disease special approval for drugs that don't have enough market to pay for the bureacuracy's regular approval process.)
And that makes sense even to compensated psychopaths in the executive suite. But I'll tell you a dirty little secret: Not ALL the decision-makers in drug companies are money-grubbing psychopaths. Some of 'em are there because they really want to help people. But (unlike some bleeding-hearts) they're smart enough to know that, after researching ten thousand compounds to get a cure (or "treatment" - make it better without ending it, if that's all you can manage) for ONE disease, you need to make enough money to pay off the cost, and the investors, to have enough left over (or enough profit to attract more from investors) to find cures or treatments for the next two, or ten, or fifty diseases.
Most of these patents are for these which nature has spent millions of years perfecting. The first person who comes along and notices it does not deserve an artificial monopoly on a natural drug.
This system was perfected back when the way to find a new antibiotic was to hunt up plants and molds, extract their funny compounds, identify any that did something useful, figure out how to make it in bulk, and productize it. (Think "penicillin" and "{whatever}mycin".) That's exactly the financial case above, and exacty what we're talking about with this new compound. They DAMNED WELL deserve a return for the millions they spent finding this - and the other millions they spent going down blind alleys while hunting for it.
Re:One of the best ways to make money... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One of the best ways to make money... (Score:2, Informative)
If you are going to blame physicians, you will have to blame patients as well. It is all too common that patients stop taking an antibiotic when they feel better - instead they should be taking it for the prescribed amount of time which insures that no partially-resistant microorganisms survive.
Re:Patenting.. (Score:3, Informative)
Let me tell you what I observe being the case, and what I suspect is the basis of your claim.
Pharmaceutical A spends $X billion on marketing. This covers TV and print ads, direct marketing materials, product literature, product packaging, etc. For the things that are done in-house by employees, we only collect information on the costs of the tangible things, and ignore wage costs. For things that are outsourced (there's *lots* of this), we look only at the final pricetag. For a successfully run national campaign, we may be talking about $3-4 million dollars. This would, of course, include the salaries of the people working for the outsourced company, as their salaries are part of the pricetag. In marketing at a pharmaceutical, usually many more man hours go in from outside companies than inside companies. It's easy to inflate the pricetag like this (which perhaps you should as their salaries are being marked up for profit). The staff of marketing individuals at the pharmaceutical are paid a range of $50,000 to $150,000 for the execs. On average though, they probably make $60-70,000.
When it comes to research, statistics are collected regarding, again, all of the tangibles, which are things like cages for animals, food for animals, wholesale chemicals to make drugs and test compounds, etc. This figure may only make it to several million dollars, perhaps a billion for a research intensive company.
What isn't considered is the salaries of the individuals running that research. This is *not* outsourced ever, aside from consultants, but money to pay consultants comes from the same place as the money to pay employees, and so isn't probably wrapped up in the final figures. Consultants in the research area maybe make up 25% of the total research employee base, and usually in the lower down jobs.
The non-technical jobs here go for $40-50,000, and the technical jobs here start at $70,000 and run well in to half a million dollars for ONE person. Yes, that's right, pathologists (who is to a doctor what a doctor is to a highschool dropout, usually requiring 16-20 years of education) frequently make more than some very big wigs on the corporate side. Then there are bonuses *required* to be paid to the managing pathologist for a drug. This is the guy or girl who in the end reviews all the available data and puts his or her signature on the final research report and says "This is safe for human use, and all these data are accurate." That comes at a very high risk, there is no real way this person can verify that numbers weren't fudged, and if something goes wrong with the drug after it hits clinical, *they* are very liable to be sued for many millions of dollars.
The mean salary of technical persons in a research division is probably close to $100,000; there are many doctors involved in this process.
The payroll for a moderate research division of a medium to medium-large pharmaceutical is probably on the order $12-15 billion dollars. I very much doubt that many pharmaceuticals are spending as much on marketing, including salaries, than they are spending on only salaries of personnel in research.
Plus, have you considered the cost of insurance when a drug goes clinical? Insurance premiums for pharmaceuticals tend to be on the order of several billion dollars a year.
Again, I'd truly like to see your source, and to verify their data on my own.