Biology Goes Open Source 100
cford writes "According to Forbes some of the drug company giants are finally realizing that their genetic research is worth more if they give it away. 'Novartis, the Basel, Switzerland, drug giant, has helped uncover which of the 20,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project are likely to be associated with diabetes. But rather than hoard this information, as drug firms have traditionally done, it is making it available for free on the World Wide Web. "It will take the entire world to interpret these data," says Novartis research head Mark Fishman. "We figure we will benefit more by having a lot of companies look at these data than by holding it secret."'"
How long until legal problems manifest themselves? (Score:5, Insightful)
come up with some 'problem' to squash this
wonderful idea.
Biological Stallman (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainly a good PR move . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I think all findings on the human genome project should be open. It took a huge effort and even persons at home let spare cycles run on this project. Our bodies, and what's inside should be open since it's not something 'they' invented, manufactured or engineered. Whatever drugs they're developing could be closed, but generics should definitely be allowed too.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember this: (Score:3, Insightful)
However keep in mind that they are not providing the world with their raw data.
Rest assured that the milked it for anything that could give a profit, stripped that off and released the rest.
This is how it happens with large scale datasets all the time.
Re:What do you know (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Biological Stallman (Score:3, Insightful)
It's very obvious that patents have spun completely out of control, and that the public has bought hook, line and sinker into it when we're all lauding some corporate interest for giving away what never was theirs to begin with.
Hurray! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mainly a good PR move . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Biology was already open source (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A step in the right direction (Score:2, Insightful)
Just like Soviet Russia. You can have everything in an empty shop for free.
The real cause of high prices in medications is the FDA approval process. It costs, on AVERAGE, about a BILLION dollars to get a drug approved in the US. A patent lasts 20 years, and it takes at least 10 years to get a drug approved. This means the pharma company has 10 years to recover their $1 billion investment.
Only, $1 billion invested over a period of 10 years is not the same as $1 billion at the time they start selling the drug, let alone $1 billion at tne END of that 10-year window! In order to have high enough profits to maintain their stock value, their investments have to appreciate at roughly 20% per year. If you spend $1 billion over 10 years, at the end of those 10 years, that $1 billion now is worth $3.01 billion. That doesn't mean that you have 10 years to make back $3 billion - that investment's sunk cost keeps increasing, to $9 billion by the end of those 10 years!
So, in fact, the pharama company has to make $900,000,000 in PROFIT, each year for 10 years, just to make up for the cost of getting FDA approval. That's apart from the cost of inventing the drug, manufacturing it, advertising it, and distributing it.
Re:Post title is misleading, but parallels do exis (Score:4, Insightful)
As a physician I am often shocked to think about how much pharmaceutical companies charge for medications. Especially considering that my practice is in the "third world", price is the absolute foremost concern for all my patients when it comes to prescribing a medication. They will often insist on an inferior generic product instead of paying three or four times as much for a newer, better drug. I understand that research is expensive.
I also know that a lot of money is spent "visiting" doctors trying to convince us that their product is the "best", organizing "conferences" for us (which are nothing more than sales pitches) with free dinner included, etc. Not to mention all the free pens, calculators, calendars and other promotional materials. Some of my colleagues virtually thrive on this stuff. I for one would rather see cheaper medication. Less price, higher volume is what I think they should be looking at. And if they can't make profit on volume, then they should stop trying to push that product as if it was the new Holy Grail - only the very rich will buy it - period.
A case in point - the vaccine for HPV (cervical cancer's principle cause). It costs over $300 PER DOSE and you need 3 doses. Whoa, that's $1000. With the average monthly salary at around $350 a month here, how many of those do they expect to sell? Even in the US a lot of people would stop and think about this. And how many do they expect me to keep on hand in my fridge at that price, taking into account expiration dates, breakages, etc? Great concept. Completely useless at that price.
Anyway, my $.02 worth. They shouldn't complain about being unprofitable - they've priced themselves out of the market. People will always get sick. They just can't afford to pay for the medication anymore.
Re:A step in the right direction (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, drug companies don't suddenly stop making profit once the patent expires and competition begins. Look at how many companies sell plain old acetyl-salicilate (aka aspirin). They're obviously making money. So that's the first hole in your argument right there.
Secondly, drug companies seem to forget that not everyone has a US income level. The price of medication is the same or more expensive outside the US than inside. This is to prevent people from "smuggling" meds into the US that were bought cheaper elsewhere. God forbid! So instead of getting into a 20 times bigger WORLD market, they decide to produce less, at a higher price. North americans can afford it - barely. And only the upper class everywhere else. And the rest, well, they just die younger. Who cares, right?
Oh and as a doctor I've been invited to many, MANY dinners - at 5 star hotels, by pharmaceutical companies. I've had friends who have been flown to exotic locations for conferences on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. They want to give me lots of promotional things, from notepads to calculators and clocks, trying to recruit me as a salesman - they think my prescription pad is for hire. This costs money too.
If only they understood that although I might read about the new wonderdrug in medical journals, what I usually prescribe is the cheapest medication around. It's what my patients want. I always give them a choice - the latest thing is X, the cheapest is Y. Invariably they choose Y.
Big pharma should get that in their heads. The old products that they are still selling, even without patents, is what should fund the research. Someone who has taken lipitor for the past 10 years and is happy with it is probably not going to change in the NEXT 10 years.
They should not gouge people on a new med because a) they can, due to a monopoly situation and b) try to justify this gouging because of "the cost of research".
But then again, pharmacology has always been about commerce and making money. Healing the patient is incidental.
What do we mean by Open Source? (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason I'm asking this is I wasn't sure from the article if the company was actually giving anything away. It is not clear to me if I invent a new drug based off the information they provided, do I now owe them a royalty?
Open Source by patent (or copyright) is a great idea if you think you can make more money off licenses to others than by your own efforts. Secrecy is better if you think that your information is based on special insight and others will not be able to duplicate it independently for several decades. What they gave away (assuming they gave anything away) may not have much intrinsic value if it is easily duplicated by others.