Researchers Work Around Hepatitis Drug Patent

Several readers let us know about a pair of British researchers who found a workaround to patents covering drugs used to treat hepatitis C. The developers intend to produce a drug cheap enough to supply to people in the poorest parts of the world. The scientists found another way to bind a sugar to interferon, producing a drug they say should be as long-lasting and effective as those sold (at $14,000 for a year's supply) by patent holders Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough. Clinical trials could begin by 2008. The article quotes developer Sunil Shaunak of Imperial College London: "We in academic medicine can either choose to use our ideas to make large sums of money for small numbers of people, or to look outwards to the global community and make affordable medicines."

Thumbs up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the arguments about the effectiveness of this drug compared to the patented one, the morality of patents on medicine and the soviet russia jokes break out; I'd like to show my respect for these people. It's great to see this effort!

Re:Thumbs up!

[wasted]

Before the arguments about the effectiveness of this drug compared to the patented one, the morality of patents on medicine and the soviet russia jokes break out; I'd like to show my respect for these people. It's great to see this effort!

Another patented drug to treat Hep C [reuters.com] is on its way as well.

Re:

[TubeSteak]

Just to clear something up, do companies get a patent on
A) the medicine
B) the process(es) necessary to make the medicine?

Re:Thumbs up!

[arivanov]

Chemical compounds as such are not patentable. Their use for a specific purpose, synthesis and administration are. That is usually enough to protect a drug to a point where you have effectively patented the compound.

Re:Thumbs up!

[DRJlaw]

Chemical compounds as such are not patentable.

Absolutely wrong.

Novel and non-obvious chemical compounds are patentable.

Naturally occurring chemical compounds may be patentable when claimed as purified forms, as pharmaceutically acceptable salts, etc. While you may argue that it is obvious to purify a compound, when the application is drafted correctly, it often discloses or is based on a qualifying disclosure of a particular compound having a particular and previously unknown utility other than its mere existence. That is sufficient to eliminate the "obviousness" of a generic purification argument.

Novel and non-obvious uses of known chemical compounds may also be patentable, as you suggested, but that category represents the minority of chemical patent applications.

Re:

[Znork]

Depends on the patent system. IIRC, the system in India specifically only granted the patent on the specific process to make the compound, which let generics manufacturers develop different methods of synthesis and produce the same compound. While, again, if I remember correctly, other countries granted the patent on the method by which the specific compound worked, essentially meaning the medicine itself is patented.

Re:

[MidVicious]

In Soviet Russia, drugs patent you!

Thanks for the assist ;)

Re:Thumbs up!

[AuMatar]

In capitalistic America, drug companies patent your genes. That will be 1 million dollars for infringing, payable up front.

Patent ruling is waste of resources

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it pathetic that researchers or bussinesses try to find workarounds for patents? This kind of news shows that patent ruling is totally flawed by design. I'm in favor of giving inventor a commercial advantage for his/her invention. This can be tax reduction for product using this patent etc. But giving inventor a monopolistic right is stupid however you evaluate the idea.

Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources

[joelt49]

No, it's not. Inventor's don't have to share anything with the outside world. Patents are simply recognizing the inventor's right to say, "I'll show you how to do X if you promise to do Y." Why shouldn't the inventor have the right do do that? It's his invention after all. There may be specific problems with the implementation of our current patent system, sure. But granting monopolistic privileges in some form is still a good idea and respect's the inventor's rights.

the so-called "inventor's rights" are in fact ...

[erlehmann]

... just vehicles to ensure progress.

there is no such thing as a "natural right" an inventor has: patent law builds on the premise that a patent is a reward and that many people like to be rewarded.

you are confusing it with copyright law - which grants the author rights because it is his creation - no one else could habe written harry potter, for example. in contrast, sooner or later someone figures out how molecule XYZ can be synthesized - there usually is no "personal creativity" involved.

Re:the so-called "inventor's rights" are in fact .

[AuMatar]

Actually, copyright is specifically NOT a natural right in the US, although it is considered one in Europe. That was a major hangup in copyright treaties, until they agreed to disagree.

Re:

[FallLine]

Actually, copyright is specifically NOT a natural right in the US, although it is considered one in Europe. That was a major hangup in copyright treaties, until they agreed to disagree.

Besides the fact that this is really a philosophical debate now, many of the so-called "natural rights" have drifted too, there is considerable debate about this in the US today. Though Jefferson was clearly influential in advocating the view that IP is mere social contract, this was not the predominant view of the time.

Re:the so-called "inventor's rights" are in fact .

[Lord Ender]

I'm glad to see you decided to respect my patent on the </b> tag. If you are interested in using this tag in the future, contact me for licensing rights.

Re:

[Slithe]

I certainly could have written Ulysses. It's only a story about some bloke pissing around Dublin.

Re:

[Da_Weasel]

Creative thinking, observing things from a unique perspective and hard work is what leads scientist to these discoveries. Saying that these discoveries are simply a matter of putting a few more bricks on an existing wall and that someone else eventually would have done this anyway is an insult to the discoveries of the scientific community.

Harry Potter built on a wealth of previously existing literature about wizards and magic, but that doesn't cheapen it in anyway...

Just because you don't see the artistic

Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources

[poopdeville]

Perhaps you've heard of the Hippocratic Oath?

The relevant bit:

To look upon his children as my own brothers[1], to teach them this art if they so desire without fee or written promise; to impart to my sons and the sons of the master who taught me and the disciples who have enrolled themselves and have agreed to the rules of the profession, but to these alone the precepts and the instruction.

[1] An earlier bit mentions the oath taker's "parents." These are to be understood to be his mentors. Thus "his children" are the oath taker's peers.

Re:

[NDPTAL85]

Perhaps you've heard the Reality Oath?

"To make as much money as one possibly can, in hopes of not falling too far behind the Joneses."

Do you really care what a doctor's motivations were as long as they make a cure or treatment for something as fast as they possibly can?

Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources

[vandan]

No, it's not. Inventor's don't have to share anything with the outside world.

And where did this inventor get their education from? And their materials? And their food?

It is the responsibility of inventors to share their ideas with all society. As others have pointed out, they have a right to make a fair living off these ideas. But there is a limit to how 'fair' you can get, and making billions of dollars in profits while others are suffering and dying is going way past that point.

Joelt, You need to have a good, long think about yourself. Profit is not the most important thing in the world.

Re:

[Joebert]

Profit is not the most important thing in the world.

Perhaps, but the most important thing in the world happens to like guys with big, profits.

Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources

[hclyff]

And where did this inventor get their education from

Absolutely. All discoveries are done based on previous published research. If every pharmaceutical company kept their research to themselves, there wouldn't be much progress really. Not to mention that in academia, if you don't publish you don't exist. That's where patents sort of come in, to allow and encourage publishing of results done by private companies.

Think of it this way: if those companies weren't guaranteed profit in case of discovering something useful, they wouldn't do the research in the first place.

Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources

[Znork]

"Think of it this way: if those companies weren't guaranteed profit in case of discovering something useful, they wouldn't do the research in the first place."

Except, of course, they're not guaranteed the profit for the research, they're guaranteed the profit from having a monopoly. Which essentially means their incentive is to get as much profit out of the monopoly as possible (ie, a huge incentive for marketing) while investing the bare minimum necessary to gain another monopoly into research.

And, of course, ignoring the fact that if we didnt grant those monopolies could very well be spending the money now going to the pharmas directly on research instead, thus getting more than five times the R&D done for the same amount of money we spend on medicines today.

Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources

[dwandy]

To show an example [yahoo.com] to illustrate this (picked purely at random, and may not be typical in the industry, but I suspect it is):

Revenue (ttm) : 52.21B
Gross Profit (ttm): 42.77B
Profit Margin (ttm): 24.17%

...and this [yahoo.com] shows the industry enjoys about a 65% Gross Margin.

Contrast that with an industry that doesn't enjoy protection on it's product, say Toyota [yahoo.com] (also picked randomly but assumed to be more or less industry leader at this time)

Revenue (ttm): 189.92B
Gross Profit (ttm): 34.83B
Profit Margin (ttm): 7.00%
...and this industry has to make do with only about 19% Gross Margin [yahoo.com].

So to agree with what you're saying: Pfizer made some 42billion dollars in profits because they have protection on their product; and that profit comes directly from the consumer, and comes directly at the expense of sick people that can't afford the drugs they produce.

'Research' is an expense which decreases profit. Such large profits are simply monopoly protection income that has not been spent as promised: on research.
This clearly shows us that we need to at a minimum reduce the patent term, and more realisticly review the very concept of drug patents.

Anyone who argues that the current patent system is necessary or healthy in the face of these abnormal profits is sick and twisted or stupid or corrupt or maybe all of the above ...

Re:

[BCoates]

It's not representative at all; that's Pfizer, who hit the lifestyle-drug goldmine with Viagra and also sells bestselling drug Lipitor. Unless they're running the next Viagra through testing right now and not telling anyone about it, when those drugs go out of patent around 2011, their lucky streak will end and their numbers will go back to something resembling sanity.

Assuming the numbers on that page are even true, which given the recent track record of American companies, they probably aren't.

Re:

[FallLine]

And you think those 'studies' will not be done? How many people still buy Tylenol, when there is a perfectly good generic acetaminophen bottle sitting right next to it in most pharmacies for half the cost?

The same can be said of many things, however this is usually only with something that costs a relatively small amount in the first place so that the percieved price difference is very small for the consumer. This is not the case with generics. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that unless the doctor spe

Nice ....

[jbeaupre]

You managed to slip in an ad hominem attack on anyone who dares disagree with you, before they can even respond. Nice way to encourage rational dialog. Or maybe you're so self centered you believe anyone who ever disagrees with you is defective.

Re:

[Znork]

If you in and analyze the numbers on the books of the pharmaceuticals you'll also note a other vast differences between their financials and companies like your car producer.

IIRC, the breakdown is something like this:

Pharmaceutical:
35% production
35% marketing and administration
15% R&D
15% profit

Cars:
80% production
10% marketing and administration
5% R&D
5% profit

Now, the pharmaceuticals of course claim that they invest a high amount in R&D, with the comparison against other industries. However, wh

Re:

[GuyverDH]

I know this is something of a tangent to the discussion, and may be moderated as off topic, however, I think it fits to portions of the discussion.

How much money is there in the United States?
How much has been printed? How much is in circulation? How much has been lost? How much is moldering in a sealed mason jar under Uncle Funkenwagner's front porch?

The reason I'm asking is this? To what percentage of currently existing, freely exchanged cash do corporations aspire to? At what percentage of collecti

Re:

[thewiz]

But there is a limit to how 'fair' you can get, and making billions of dollars in profits while others are suffering and dying is going way past that point.

Agreed. When pieces of paper and slugs of metal become more important than people it's a sad, sad day.
Nice to see people in developed nations taking an interest in helping those who need help without trying to take them to the cleaners.

Re:

[Metasquares]

It is the responsibility of inventors to share their ideas with all society.

No. I used to think this as well, but this is one of the reasons why scientists are treated poorly despite their contributions. We will develop our ideas in any case, but we are under no obligation to share these ideas with an unworthy society. That we do anyway says quite a bit about ourselves as people, but never assume that we are in any way obliged to slave away so everyone else can use, abuse, and profit off of the fruits of

Re:

[vandan]

There is plenty of money at the top end. It's a bald-faced lie that this type of research is not affordable by governments.

There's one thing you can say about cold, callous bastards, they don't suck off the public teat. You'll never find one on welfare, they can pull their own weight.

That's ridiculous! How can you possibly say that they're pulling their own weight? They earn thousands of times what the average worker does. Surely they don't work thousands of times harder. It is these people exactly that b

Re:

[noidentity]

"I'll show you how to do X if you promise to do Y." Why shouldn't the inventor have the right do do that? It's his invention after all.

The problem is that many discoveries are also given this treatment, preventing use by others who independently discover the same thing.

wrong

[oohshiny]

Patents are simply recognizing the inventor's right to say, "I'll show you how to do X if you promise to do Y."

Unlike physical property, the Constitution does not recognize the existence of intellectual property or any other intrinsic rights to ideas or inventions.

Therefore, patents create that right, they don't recognize it. And they create that right only temporarily, only for a very limited set of ideas, and only if the inventor actually lives up to specific requirements.

In contrast to physical property

Re:

[Eivind Eklund]

In practice, it isn't his invention that's getting protected - it's just a monopoly granted against others inventing in the same area. The patent database is almost never referenced. (Also, in the medical field, there's very often public money involved to start with...)

Eivind.

Re:

[Jamu]

The other side of the coin is that patents do more than respect an inventor's rights. Say, an inventor makes an invention and keeps it a secret. Another inventor makes the same invention and decides to share it. This seems all well and good, none of the natural "rights" of the inventors have been infringed. Now consider what happens if the first inventor patents his invention and prevents its use: The patent now stops the other inventor sharing his invention and the public from enjoying it. The move trivial

Re:

[hey!]

You put your finger on the fundamental point: do you have a fundamental right to control your ideas, in the same way you have a fundamental right to control decisions about your body, or your personal property?

This is more than a legal issue. It's an ethical issue.

Underlying the ethical issue is a model of how ideas are generated. Depending on the version of that model, you end up at a different ethical position and a different opinion on how the law should be changed.

One model is the genius model. Ther

Re:

[Znork]

Actually, even better, he should start out in a cave and work from there. After all, why grant an exclusive right on something when most of it comes from the public pool of knowledge anyway?

And, hey, maybe if he's a super genious he might get as far as figuring out how a pointed stick works.

Re:

[clickclickdrone]

Isn't it pathetic that researchers or businesses try to find workarounds for patents?

Ordinarily I'd say yes but the drug industry has been doing the same thing for years. It's an established business practice to produce an almost identical drug to an existing one, with the same effect and 99.9% structure then market it as new/improved with a corresponding price hike.
Basically these guys have just done cheaply for the end user what the drug co's do expensively. Hoisted by their own petard.

Re:

[darkmeridian]

Don't forget that the patent system demands that an inventor publish a written description of his invention and enable others to practice it without undue experimentation. Without patents, there would be no incentive for private labs to publish any of their research. All work would be kept as trade secrets, and all research sponsored by drug companies would be kept under wraps. Only the hopelessly idealistic would believe that a world without patents would be a nirvana where intellectualism flowed freely

Re:

[It'sYerMam]

To my knowledge, a lot of drug research these days is trying to find out how to improve on existing drugs. So this probably would have been found, regardless.

Big Pharm does this too

[Heir Of The Mess]

For example Australian company Biota [biota.com.au] created and patented Relenza for treating bird flu, then Roche modified their product slightly to produce and patent Tamiflu.

DO these guys accept Paypal?

[Stephen Samuel]

'Cause, if they do, I'd like to donate $10 to their research fund.

Re:

[LordPhantom]

Signed.

Good old USA

[oman_]

A thousand bucks says this is never going to pass FDA testing in the United States... and we'll never find out why.

Re:Good old USA

[MosesJones]

Which is actually fine as most people in the US can afford to pay for the drug or have the insurance anyway. I don't think that people in Africa are going to care too much that something doesn't have FDA approval if it is actually proven safe and proven effective by people such as WHO or the Red Cross.

This isn't aimed at helping the USA, its aimed at helping the rest of the world.

Re:

[TubeSteak]

With generic drugs, if the end result of their medicine is chemically the same as a previously approved FDA drug, they get to skip all the expensive human trials & whatnot.

It seriously shortens the approval process & they (generic drug makers) can usually start the approval process before the 'original' drug's patent protection has worn off.

But after reading TFA, it looks like they've changed the chemical structure of the end result, so they may need to go through years of expensive clinical trials

Medical patents don't spur innovation

[LParks]

So, here is proof that money and time was spent researching a useful medication for the good of sick people, regardless of cost of entry and return on investment (financially speaking, at least). So people really can create new ideas without the need to hoard them and profit greatly while excluding others.

Re:

[BCoates]

Claiming "medical patents spur innovation" isn't the same as claiming that "there would be no research at all without medical patents".

Re:

[Otter]

In this case, that would effectively be true, anyway. The "innovation" here represents <1% of the process of making the drug in the first place -- if it hadn't been for the companies' developing and testing the compound, there'd be nothing to find an alternate synthesis route to.

In further news...

[Ritontor]

Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough released a statement today. It reads as follows:

"FUCK!"

Slashdot headlines

[urbanradar]

Looking at the Slashdot frontpage right now, among the stories I see are: "Researchers Work Around Hepatitis Drug Patent", "Wal-Mart Is Pushing Compact Fluorescent Bulbs", "Month of Apple Fixes", "MySQL Falcon Storage Engine Open Sourced", "Creating Prion-Free Cows". Maybe it's just my morning coffee making me optimistic, but it seems to me there's not usually this much positive news on Slashdot! Almost gives you hope for 2007, that does.

NICE!!!!!!

[Rooked_One]

I've undergone pegaylated interferon treatment twice now... didn't work for me, however did for my brother, and you have to have AWESOME insurance to cover this stuff. I doubt the side effects (which are 11 months of hell) are any different, but if it was cheaper, and for the people who relapse when the drug does keep the virus in check, but comes back, this would be great. After the treatment I felt so good for the couple of months that the viral levels were low... I've been hoping for a prophylactic kind of treatment for a long time... I really hope the pharmco's aren't assholes about something like this.

Re:

[jbeaupre]

So antibiotic drugs don't cure disease? Antifungal? Antivenom? Chemotherepy? Guess it's time to take back a few Nobel prizes and give them to you.

$1,000 per capsule.

[pair-a-noyd]

Some years back my landlord told me that his dad (who was near 100 years old and living in a nursing home) was on a special medicine that was kept under lock and key and that the he kept the key.
The pills were locked up at the nursing home but he took the only key to the cabinet home with him.
He had to drive up there each day, unlock the cabinet and administer a single pill to his dad under the supervision of the head nurse. Each pill was $1,000 and his dad had to take one every single day of his life or h

Re:

[phayes]

I have little sympathy for big pharma but sometimes the high price can be justified. When Taxol was determined to be a promising cancer treatment it's only source was from harvesting the bark of the pacific yew tree. As Taxol was only present in minute quantities in the bark, you needed to sacrifice hundreds of trees to obtain enough Taxol for a single treatment, thus Taxol was extremely expensive. They have since come up with methods of synthesising taxol from precursors in the needles which has allowed th

Re:$1,000 per capsule.

[Quiet_Desperation]

Are you sure it was really $1000? That's $365,000 a year. The most expensive currently marketed drug is Cerezyme at $175,000 a year, and that's for some weird genetic disorder that only, like 5000 people on the planet suffer from.

Re:

[wallet55]

I agree, this would require some specifics to be believable. However, it does get to a truth: drugs can be very very expensive. There are multiple reasons, some of them not obvious. First and foremost, disease populations (ie the drug's customer base) are being split by the more accurate subclassification genomics is affording medicine. This means that a cure for any newly more specific disease is for fewer and fewer people. When you take the higher and higher costs of developement and testing, add in the o

Against patents

[kosmosik]

Great argument here - just mention that probably some people will die due to patents and describe the situation with drug patents. Nice one.

See?

[Digital Vomit]

See? Patents do encourage innovation!...by forcing others to work around existing patents. :-P

Re:

[Digital Vomit]

Whoever modded my post as insightful, I think you missed the point.

a couple of things to keep in mind

[oohshiny]

People should keep in mind that a large part of the development of drugs is already financed by tax dollars. Yes: your tax dollars go towards drugs that drug companies then get a monopoly on in order to sell. It wasn't always so; I believe the law on that changed in 1980.

As I recall, Krugman did the calculation and computed how much tax dollars subsidize the development of patented drugs and how much tax payers end up paying for purchasing the resulting proprietary drugs, and he came to the conclusion tha

Re:

[Overzeetop]

You could save half of the development costs upfront, as pharma companies already spend more on marketing than on research and development. BTW - only a small fraction of that money goes to the commercials you see - most comes from the armies of representatives that ply doctors offices with samples, notepads, pens, junkets, and other freebies. And it works - they doctors get the dog and pony show, and even if they don't take the free trips/tickets/gifts, they remember the sales pitch.

I happen to be sucepta

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the profits. Don't forget the silly profits. Almost £7 billion profit for Glaxosmithkline. You read that right - £7,000,000,000 - or $14,000,000,000.

They're suggesting making cheap drugs, keeping the patents away from big companies, and having clinical testing subsidised by the countries where they'd be used (which seems fair if they aren't trying to profiteer), as well as developing drugs on obscure illnesses which the west doesn't have (and big business ignores). It's a win/win situ

Re:

[wired_LAIN]

Keep in mind that what is deemed an unacceptable drug in the developed world can be a huge benefit to developing nations. For example, lets say I have a very cheap drug that cures malaria in 80% of patients, but causes severe side effects in the remaining 20%. Clearly, this is unacceptable in the USA or other developed nations. However, in many countries in Africa, where millions of people die from malaria every year, this drug is perfect - its cheap, and it cures most of the patients. Regardless of the rel

Re:

[RMH101]

So go and market that drug in Africa - nothing's stopping you doing so. You can't sell in US or Europe without FDA/MHRA approval (which you wouldn't get in this example), but unless their's any African regulators you need to satisfy, sell away. This doesn't happen in practice because it's not economic for Pharma to generate drugs of different toxicity for different markets, and probably not ethical, either. I take your point, but there's nothing stopping anyone doing what you suggest and it isn't happeni

Re:

[Basje]

That is a gross oversimplyfication.

I know and understand that companies often act unethical and there is a need to protect people from unethical behaviour. But if the development of medicine could take place in developing countries, the prices could be much lower even if we keep the companies to the same moral standards we like to do in western society.

Many people protest against poor developing countries having to pay high prices for medicine. At the same time arguments like yours keep it that way. It's no

Re:

[tkrotchko]

It appears in many studies that R&D costs and clinical studies are the main drivers of cost:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/12/19/AR2006121901510.html [washingtonpost.com]

A comprehensive look (and really interesting read) is here:

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.pd f [cptech.org]

Where it goes into great detail about drug development costs.

yes, you are

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Drug companies have to turn a profit; otherwise, they don't produce the drugs.

Drug companies spend far more money on advertising than they do on research and development. The next time you watch "Wheel of Fortune", you might realize that the billions of dollars being spent pushing viagra and nexium on everyone are NOT making their way to fundamental advances in science.

2. The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug -- the drug's social utility (this is basic economics).

No matter what the local basement-dwelling Rand-ite may tell you, economics is not a science and is not necessarily the best model for health care. Human welfare is not a widget that can (or should) be bought and sold like a car or an mp3 player.

3. Once the drug companies patents run out, anyone can produce generic medicines cheaply.

And how many millions of people will die in the meantime?

and if they didn't advertise...

[RMH101]

...they'd sell less. Make less profit. They don't spend money on advertising just for fun...Big pharma lives and dies by it's megabrands and these appear to need to be advertised in the US. I'm much more comfortable with *no* advertising of prescription medication, but I guess that's an issue to address the US TV networks with, rather than the companies that avail themselves of their advertising...

Re:

[kg4czo]

You're a bit confused. Lives are lives.

The fact that a drug that a drug is brought to market and can save lives doesn't mean it's available to everyone. It's available to those who can either pay or have insurance. Making a valuation on someone's life because of what they have or don't have in the bank is wrong, in the most literal sense.

Drug companies should be obligated to allow at least one generic per name-brand drug they produce and patent. It may mean a little less advertising and Dr. smoozing money,

Re:

[Cerebus]

"Are the drug companies spending money on advertising for fun, or is it with the aim of producing a return? Presumably, they are aware of the economics of their field and know the balance for return on R + D, and return on advertising. Also, genuine question, do you have the figures to verify this statement? I have an interest in this anyway, so i'm not just trying to undermine your argument."

http://www.newstarget.com/010315.html [newstarget.com]

Also, several studies on direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising have

Re:

[MemoryDragon]

Problem is that most money is not spend on research but on advertisement... about 2/3rd of the drug money goes into ads, and marketing.

Re:

[BCoates]

It doesn't matter how much they spend on advertising. It's not an alternative to paying for research. There isn't some fixed pile of money in the industry being divided up between research and advertisment. The investment world will dump as much money on pharma companies as the investors are guessing can be spent and return a profit.

If advertising the hell out of a product during a drug's short patent life increases the total profit, that means more return for investors, which means the whole industry can

Not at all

[Habrok]

It was "we in academic medicine", not "we in corporate medicine". Academic research is not motivated by profits, or at least, it should not be.

Secondly, you can't really apply demand-supply analysis on life-saving drugs. When it is a matter of life and death (and there isn't any alternative product), the demand is infinite.

Thirdly, it is quite possible to provide economic (and other) incentives to researchers, even without patents.

You know, there's a reason why doctors take the hippocratic oath [wikipedia.org]. Medic

Re:fallacious

[GravelordBocephus]

"(the more profit, the more useful it is)" So a treatment for cancer taken three times daily for the rest of your life is more useful than a cure for cancer? I'll keep that in mind.

Treating is better than curing.

[splutty]

"(the more profit, the more useful it is)" So a treatment for cancer taken three times daily for the rest of your life is more useful than a cure for cancer? I'll keep that in mind.

Bingo. You got it in one. The same goes for a lot of other fields as well. Take for example Diabetes-B, which is a controllable disease, as long as you check your bloodsugarlevel 2 times a day, and either use insulin or dieting restriction to adjust for it.

However, to do these tests, you need testsstrips, which are not very cheap

Re:

[Overzeetop]

If it's 14k a year for Hep-C treatment, van you imagine what the potential "cure" for Diabetes would go for. I'm putting the Vegas over-under at $185k right now, but I think I may be setting it a bit low.

Re:fallacious

[FinalMidnight]

Wow! I'm gobsmacked at your sheer, unabashed ignorance of "The way things work".

To the first: what do you think the ratio of new drug research is to profits? For a major drug company? Conversely, what do you think the ratio of marketing vs profits? Got a clue? No? Feel free to go do a little googling. It is an open secret that drug companies spend almost nothing (compared) on research into new drugs. Even then the research directed is in very, very specific (eg profitable) areas. Hint! It makes a lot more money to market a drug for "Erectile Disfunction" than to actually make a simple, cheap cure for just about any disease you care to name.

To address your second point: The profits made from a drug are a reflection of the profitability of that drug. Nothing more or less. Concrete examples of how _value_ and _profit_ are distinct concepts to follow.

To the third: Once patents run out, drug companies market new, patented drugs. Older, generic drugs are not marketed. Part of the reason this happens is that drug companies advertise directly to doctors (who write the perceptions) and part of the reason is that drug stores make more money selling drugs that cost more. There are a bunch of simple ways to fix most of this in legislation. That, however, is another can of worms.

Examples of point two and the relationship with point three:

Ritalin: Heard of it? Great! How about Dexamphetamine? Not so much? Little known fact! Dexampetamine is a more effective treatment for ADD and ADHD than Ritalin. However it is perscribed less than a fifth as much. Why? Because the patents on Dexamphetamine ran out years ago. It can be made by any drug company and is a commodity item. Profits are very, very low. Ritalin is very profitable because it is a treatment. A patient will need to continue to take Rtalin for years. Possibly forever. Profitability: High! Value: Fuck All! Ritalin does a worse job than a drug that costs less than a third of the price.

Treatment of stomach ulcers: A method of curing stomach ulcers has been around for more than ten years. Thats right, A complete cure! The Australian who discovered the cure was under attack from many major drug companies, who attempted to discredit him and his research. Why? Because anti-acid treatments of stomach ucers are a) Patented and b) something that needs to be taken _forever_. The cure relys on a simple, generic anti-biotic and some mineral treatments. Not patentable, therefore no profits.

If you give a shit about any of these issues, you might be interested in the process of testing and approval that goes on in the USA compared to other countries (Like the UK or Canada) and what the differences mean. You might also be interested in the "Evergreening" of medical patents and the blatant kickbacks that medical companies give Doctors and Pharmacists.

And YES, I am a fucking Pharmacist.

Re:fallacious

[janek78]

Could you clarify that about treatment for stomach ulcers? I thought that omeprazole was already off patent (we have 11 brands available here in the Czech Republic). The cost of treatment for omeprazole is about $0.33 to $1 a day here. It is usually given for 6 weeks, so the total cost is something up to $40. And it actually compeletely cures the ulcers! Wow! Amazing.

I suggest you go back freshen up a little before you come preaching here.

And YES, I am a fucking doctor and no I don't have any shares of pharma companies. :)

Re:

[Daetrin]

I've seen hundreds of commercials for antacids but this is the first time i've ever heard of an actual _cure_ for ulcers. As a doctor you may know about more effective treatments or even cures for any particular problem, but i don't think that in itself negates the grand-parent's argument that whenever possible treatments are what is pushed by pharma marketing departments, not cures, and if possible they'd rather sell a more expensive patented treatment than a cheaper generic one.

And YES, I am just a norm

Re:

[zubernerd]

Omeprazole (aka Prilosec) alone won't cure ulcers, but in combination with antibiotics it can. In the US, except for OTC antibiotic ointments, antibiotics in anything require a prescription.

To quote wikipedia:
"Use in Helicobacter pylori eradication

Omeprazole is combined with the antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin (or metronidazole in penicillin-hypersensitive patients) in the one week eradication triple therapy for Helicobacter pylori. Infection by H. pylori is the causative factor in the

not exactly

[janek78]

Actually, omeprazole alone WILL cure ulcers. Most ulcers would even heal on their own.

The reason antibiotics are often given is the association between Helicobacter infection and ulcers. Eradication of this bacteria improves healing but most importantly it reduces your risk of getting ulcers again it the future. But (depending on your population, of course) the prevalence of H. pylori is actually decreasing and more and more ulcers seen today are H. pylori negative (in the two years I worked at a GE clinic,

15% to research, 85% to other stuff

[Christian Engstrom]

what do you think the ratio of new drug research is to profits? For a major drug company? Conversely, what do you think the ratio of marketing vs profits? Got a clue? No? Feel free to go do a little googling.

In case the grandparent poster is Google impaired - a condition that medical science has yet to find a cure for ;) - I'll be happy to supply some links:

Here are the Financial Highlights from the annual reports of Novartis [novartis.com], Pfizer [pfizer.com] and AstraZeneca [astrazeneca.com]. They all spend around 15% of their revenues on researc

Re:

[Aladrin]

"How can 15% spent on R&D justify a markup by 10,000% on the final product?"

I'll bite. Because 15% of that 10,000% markup is used for research. The initial research is NOT CHEAP. When someone comes along and 'creates a cheaper version' they are not starting from scratch. They know how the new drug works, and what it does. Then they just have to modify it slightly, or find something else that does the same thing. That's quite a bit easier than starting from scratch and finding something to do the j

Re:

[balloonhead]

You're really a fucking pharmacist? You don't seem to actually have much concept of the way things work.

Stomach ulcers have a cure. In some people. Those with helicobacter. And it's not just an antibiotic - it's three drugs (amoxicillin, metronidazole, and a PPI of your choice - let's say omeprazole. You mention a mineral (presume you mean bismuth?). There are a few different treatment regimens available, some with differences. I believe you can even get them as one pill with all the drugs in. Usually a wee

Re:

[fafalone]

You're a pharmacist and think dextroamphetamine is always better then methylphenidate? I highly suggest you pull out the prescribing information on those two products and look at side effect profiles, abuse potentials, risk of dependence, etc. Most people don't need the increased strength (and the problems that come with it) of dextroamphetamine, so methylphenidate is a better alternative. You know what works even better than dextroamphetamine? Desoxyn (methamphetamine). But that is only prescribed when not

Re:

[poopdeville]

1. Drug companies have to turn a profit; otherwise, they don't produce the drugs.

False. Research can be done under the auspices of a non-profit organization or university, as was done in this case.

2. The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug -- the drug's social utility (this is basic economics).

Clearly false. An effective, cheap vaccine against HIV, say, would be far more valuable than all the Vi

Re:

[Xenna]

Clearly false. An effective, cheap vaccine against HIV, say, would be far more valuable than all the Viagra in the world.

More valuable by whose standard? How did most of these people get HIV in the first place? Because at some point they valued having sex higher than the perceived risk of getting HIV. Apparently, people value having sex a lot. That's not surprising, evolution would suggest procreation is as important as self preservation. Therefore a drug that helps people having better/more sex may very we

Re:

[Xenna]

You're autistic, right?

No, but apparently the incidency among AC's is rather high...

According to the money flow metric you espouse, you are more valuable than about 200 africans. That's wrong. Very very wrong.

That depends on the Africans in question. Some of them are actually richer than me. In any case wrong has nothing to do with it. It's the only way things appear to work. Systems based on fairness have been tried many times but they always turned out even worse than good old capitalism. However great yo

Re:

[jandersen]

1. Drug companies have to turn a profit; otherwise, they don't produce the drugs.

Do they really? Perhaps drug research should be limited by law to universities and not-for-profit organisations. The people who do the actual research are not the ones that rake in the hundreds of billions each year - that's the stockholders, who by God have enough already.

2. The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug --

Re:

[nagora]

Large profits give drug companies an incentive to develop the most useful medicines (the more profit, the more useful it is)

You have perfectly summed up why drug companies spend most of their time (and budgets) on fleecing rich people instead of curing poor people.

While you can make the argument that a specific drug X or Y would still be developed in the absence of profit motives, this is overlooking the fact that reduced profits mean a reduced incentive to produce drugs in the future.

Reduced profits is no

Re:

[Znork]

"Large profits give drug companies an incentive to develop the most useful medicines"

No. A monopoly give drug companies a large incentive for marketing. And fails to give drug companies appropriate market incentive for efficiency. 80% of pharma revenue is spent on marketing, administration and inefficient production. The R&D is just a necessary evil to obtail the particular monopoly necessary; witness the classic twist-a-molecule game to gain another 20 years monopoly with minimum investment and minimum

I just posted this up above

[tkrotchko]

At the risk of being modded redundant to myself, people should look at this link before drawing conclusions about the development costs of drugs.

      http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.pd f [cptech.org]

And I think that you're being modded a troll is complete incorrect. Moderators, just because you don't agree with someone doesn't make them a troll.

Re:

[joelt49]

Your comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the way things work in a capitalist society. Even with this drug, the researchers will have to convince some drug company to manufacture and distribute this drug. How will they do it? By convincing the manufacturer that they will be able to make a profit off of it. Here's the crux of the issue -- you state, As the above example shows, you don't need extra profit to develop a new drug. That's true. But in rare circumstances. The key is when you say "a" new

Re:

[montyzooooma]

These researchers don't work for a drug company they work at a university. What they're saying is that most research is now commercialised and findings like this would normally be licensed to a big company. This is at odds with the traditional view of public research which was for the benefit of everybody. Pretty rare to find any serious research going on nowadays that isn't either sold to or spun off into a commercial enterprise. Licensing the technology to all takers for a modest amount means they don't h

Re:

[bitkari]

You're unlikely to replicate the research large drug companies do in academia.

The good folk at The Wellcome Trust [wellcome.ac.uk] might disagree with you there.

And unlike purely commercial entities, and while they do commercialise some of their efforts, they aren't trying to extract as much profit as possible like Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca are.

Bottom line: Drug companies have to make a profit. They have to recover costs

Drug companies DO have to make a profit, but to say that this is to recoup their R&D costs is a littl

Re:

[orasio]

The money has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is usually from profits from drugs. And as I said earlier, profits are an indication of social utility -- how much people value the drug. The more profits, the more people value the drug. The larger the profit, the more good the drug does, and the more incentive to produce that drug (which is why capitalism is pretty cool).

Capitalism has some cool things. This is exactly where it fails.
You are counting people as equals. You equate amount of money invested with people that benefit. That is just not true, specially in a capitalistic society.

If your reasoning had any logic, then casinos would be more valuable for society than hospitals, because there's more money invested into them.

The most money, globally, is overrepresented for rich people problems, like cancer and alzheimer. Globally, the most short term benefit for people a

Re:

[joelt49]

Sorry for the flamebait, but you're a moron. Here's why:

1. The software development industry is very different from the drug industry. In particular, look at the costs of bringing something to market. It costs far more to bring a patented drug to market than it does a computer program. So you have higher costs you have to recover.
2. Where does a lot of support for Linux come from? Companies like Red Hat and IBM, who are also competing and want to turn a profit. However, IBM and Red Hat can support diff

Re:

[RMH101]

Are you on medication?

Re:

[The Rizz]

If it wasn't for patents, what would drive people to look for alternate treatments ?

I dunno ... maybe the idea that there are possibly better treatments that could be discovered? Ones with less side effects, that work faster, that work for people that the known treatments don't, or perhaps even ones that have a lower production/materials cost?