Big Pharma Presses US To Quash Cheap Drug Production In India 255
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."
We need Indian drug companies (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's terrible that the US would try to keep more people from getting access to effective, affordable remedies, such as beta blockers.
Re:We need Indian drug companies (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We need Indian drug companies (Score:5, Insightful)
The drug is Gleevec, not Glivec. I take it, and it's a miracle drug for those it helps. And it's expensive as HECK!
Novartis had its 17 years of patent protection. Invented prior 1996, the first patent expired in 2013, and so Novartis decided to seek a patent on a slightly altered version, to gain 20 year protection. The Indian court saw through this and said No way. Good on them.
The drug has paid back its development costs many multiple times already.
This is a common tactic of drug manufacturers as their patents run our they suddenly find a way to color it pink or something equally trivially unimportant change and try to start the patent clock all over. This is a total subversion of the purpose behind patents.
XR Drugs (Score:2)
Or formulate an XR "Extended Release" version of the drug under the same name.
On the other hand, the profits from existing drugs helps pay for research into new drugs to some degree, so could India be similar to a big company that uses Open Source
Re: (Score:2)
Using open source does not require that you release your code. It's distributing open source software that requires that you make available (at a nominal cost) the changes you have made to that code, or the entirity of the source code if you are the original generator of it.
I suspect that the analogy that more accurately describes your intent is a big company finding an image in the Creative Commons with the allowance to use freely with attribution, allowing the use of the image in commercial products, and
Re: (Score:2)
nor is reducing fillers and calling it "extended release."
Right, because all the extended release versions of doxycycline have totally been denied patent protection as new drugs. Incidentally, I don't think any of us are particularly impressed that your company got a new patent on an old drug by doubling the dose (I'm sure they threw in something to reduce irritation from the higher dose too making totally a new invention).
Re:XR Drugs (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing stops doctors around the world from prescribing the generic version of the old forumulation, of for you to ask your doctor for the generic of the old formulation.
People with bad doctors, and that don't bother checking if a generic version of the drug is available get ripped off, but the rest of the people in the world can get along just fine.
Joke, right? (Score:3)
Jai Hind! (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Jai Hind! (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the meat of your statement. At the same time, what gets neglected in these debates is that the Government "should" have a small role in the industry. Primarily, making sure that the drugs being sold are safe.
That "safe" has a few meanings, such as ensuring there are no materials in the drugs that should not be there. Ensuring that the drugs contain what they are supposed to contain, and that the levels are correct. Legally today, our supposedly "controlled" environment can get away with giving you 80% of what they are supposed to give you. They can put trace levels of mercury into vaccines too, so our "controlled" environment is not doing so well.
Point being, yes there should not be this nasty monopoly. Further, there should be more law suits for false advertising against drug agencies, and many people should be in jail for releasing dangerous drugs without advising the public to the dangers (Guardasil).
Our "Government" is failing on all accounts. Not the agents fault mind you, but the agencies fault.
Re:Jai Hind! (Score:4, Informative)
They can put trace levels of mercury into vaccines
You're talking about thimerosal. They stopped using that in 1999. I'm not a big defender of big pharma, but for the record. What's interesting is that the FDA banned it from livestock vaccines before they stopped using it on humans.
Wrong (Score:3)
And it's still harmless. (Score:3)
Dumb shits.
Re: (Score:3)
Didn't someone work up numbers comparing the amount in a typical vaccine or whatever, to the amount of mercury you'd get from, say, a can of tuna or a serving of any ocean fish? I seem to recall the edible had many times the amount of mercury, and of course you're far more likely to repeat-dose that tuna sandwich.
Re:Jai Hind! (Score:4, Insightful)
That "safe" has a few meanings, such as ensuring there are no materials in the drugs that should not be there. Ensuring that the drugs contain what they are supposed to contain, and that the levels are correct.
How about assuring that the drug doesn't doesn't actually kill you?
Safety is one aspect, effectiveness is another. Neither should be left in the hands of drug developers.
We've been down that path before. Every civilized country in the world over sees and regulates the development of drugs. Many countries simply accept the EU or US regulations because they are too small to support their own programs.
We let big Tobacco self regulate right up to 2009. Had the FDA started regulating them in the 30s when it became apparent how bad smoking was who knows how many lives would have been changed.
Re:Jai Hind! (Score:5, Informative)
Guys, were you aware that in April, 2012, the patent on Viagra expired? But this was not a great day in the history of masculinity because Pfizer was able to get a federal judge to extend its reign to 2019 on the usual mysterious technical grounds.
Re:Jai Hind! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Jai Hind! (Score:5, Informative)
Thalidomide is an interesting case.
It is a photo enantiomer, meaning that it has a left handed, and right handed isomer that will bend light one way, or another, when in solution.
The right handed isomer is an effective sedative, while the left handed one is a tetragenic compound.
The problem is that even if highly refined so that only R isomer is administered, the pH of the patient's blood will racemize the isomers again.
It could be entirely possible for thalidomide to be safe, if administered with a chaparone to prevent racemization.
At the time, the preparations of thalidomide were a heterogenous mix of both isomers, as there was no research into possible side effects from the mixed sample, and the prospect of birth defects wasnt considered, as the intended use was not for treating morning sickness. As an anti-cancer treatment for non-pregnant people [mayoclinic.org], it is still a useful compound.
Thalidomide was originally developed as a sedative/hypnotic compound, and not as a treatment for nausea. (This would be similar to say, scopolamine, which is used to treat motion sickness. This is not meant to imply that the comounds are related. They arent. However, scopolamine is ALSO useful for treating some forms of nausea. Fancy that.) The use as treatment for nausea is what heralded the use of the product to treat morning sickness, and the subsequent epidemic of infant mortality and deformity that swept the world. It isn't that thalidomide is a bad drug: it was, and is still being shown to be a VERY useful drug. The problem is that thalidomide was not used properly, and was provided OTC, which strongly exacerbated the problem. To pick on poor scopolamine again, it too had a stint as an OTC motion sickness medicine and sleep aid, which ended up causing all manner of problems when certain... shall we say, "Degenerate" people discovered that it made an excellent date rape drug when dissolved in alcoholic beverages.
It isn't that either drug is "bad". It is that the lust for profits from the sale of the drugs can lead to very bad decisions in marketing and distribution of those drugs. Drugs developed for a certain purpose should be extensively and thuroughtly tested for efficacy before being used in alternative manners; such as for instance, Minoxadil. It is the primary ingredient in Rogaine, a male hairloss treatment with FDA approval. It was originally a prescription heart medicine for treating hypertension. It took quite some time for minoxadil to recieve FDA approval for treating alopecia. That is a good thing, as the testing helped establish what the ideal dosages are, and that the concentration must be different for treating women than for treating men. If minoxadil had been rushed to market as a treatment for alopecia, there could have been very dangerous results, since it *IS* a blood pressure medication! This is one of the reasons why rogaine is a topically applied preparation, and not a preparation for internal consumption. (The regrowth of hair was a common side effect of orally administered minoxadil for treating hypertension. Oral administration of the compound would be effective for regrowing hair, but the concentrations needed would make taking the drug dangerous to a patient's cardiac health. Topically applied minoxadil allows high concentrations at the site of interest, with a slow overall rate of absorption, making it ineffective at lowering blood pressure. If rushed to market, it is quite concievable that minoxadil tablets would have been seen for treating alopecia, and that there would have been class action suits as bald people all over started dieing.)
The FDA's insistence on efficacy studies is to prevent dangerous drug use, and to ensure that a drug actually does what it says it does. The long term drug study requirements are intended to catch things like thalidomide birth defects, as it would have shown up with thalidomide being used as a sedative/hypnotic as a
Re:Jai Hind! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not a large role. As in, publicly finance 100% of drug research, since the worst university could piss away 50% of it's funding and still have a better return than Pharma, who spend more than that on stock options and advertizing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because corporates such as the Pharma companies own your politicians?
I just love the line "But don't forget that big pharma, for all its problems still is the number one creator of new drugs.".
Install government-backed monopolies. Let universities use any public grants to research drugs and then sell the patents from that research to said companies. Allow them to buy legislation and orgs like the FDA outright. Turn a blind eye to 1,000,000 dodgy and anticompetitive practices.
Allow said companies to complete
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Enjoy it while you can, because when Beta goes mandatory, there will not be any more comments.
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Drug companies have pushed very hard to make sure that the United States insists that all patents be treated equal in every international trade agreement that they sign. People sometimes erroneously believe that this has something to do with softwar
It is far, far better ... (Score:5, Insightful)
that poor people die because they cannot buy the cheap drugs that may save their lives than a few rich western pharma lose any profit. :-(
Let them produce cheap drugs for local consumption. OK don't allow them to be imported to the west where (most) people can afford them. But condemning people to die just to protect your profits is, frankly, sick. Maybe not much different from tobacco companies, but still sick.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So let me be the devils advocate here,
The argument is that if India does this the rest will follow and then the companies will not be able to make up their research costs to facilitate the development of new drugs, since the current batch of drugs was researched with the expectation of selling them worldwide.
If pharmaceutical companies are making that much money, why doesn't India create their own state or private pharmaceutical companies (or buy a stake in Pfizer) and use the profits to pay for local drugs
No, they weren't.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The current crop (and the future crops, too) of drugs were NEVER intended to have to recoup costs out of non-developed-world countries.
In fact, pretty much ALL drug research is based solely on the American market. That is, everything else outside the American market is gravy (or, in this case, pure profit). The metrics are driven by how long it takes to recoup money from the USA's market.
The reason why is that the US drug market (due to a combination of large population, and completely unregulated pricing) is so much more lucrative than anywhere else, by an order of magnitude even more than Western Europe. That's right - the USA alone brings in more profit THAN THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD for a drug.
Letting India manufacture these domestically (and, heck, the entire rest of the developed world) wouldn't affect drug research and investment strategies one little bit. The big fear from drug companies is reimportation, where drugs manufactured in India are imported back into the USA for sale, without the major patent premium being paid. This is fairly trivially avoidable.
So, yeah, in the end, it's about squeezing that last dime in profits out of people, and not fundamentally giving a damned about anything else.
Re:No, they weren't.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Letting India manufacture these domestically (and, heck, the entire rest of the developed world) wouldn't affect drug research and investment strategies one little bit. The big fear from drug companies is reimportation, where drugs manufactured in India are imported back into the USA for sale, without the major patent premium being paid. This is fairly trivially avoidable.
So, yeah, in the end, it's about squeezing that last dime in profits out of people, and not fundamentally giving a damned about anything else.
Modafinal is a drug available from India on the cheap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
commercially it was being sold as Provigil.
The article I didn't read hits upon this drug, I've purchased it a few times from India as Provigil (with a prescription), it's come I'm sure as modafinil.
Provigil's patent was to expire in 2012 thus begot Nuvigil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org] which is slower acting, Provigil's patent was renewed for a very long time, I haven't got an answer to when, but told it's no time soon.
Nuvigil runs around $20 a tablet, Provigil $25 a box of 50 (India), Provigil isn't being sold anymore (in the US) that I know of just kept for it's patent.
Modafinal is your basic generic drug, everything after is research.
In the case of Newvigil, it being such an exceptional drug they are asking for more than it's worth, where as Modafinal being virtually the same thing, is asking it's manufacture price and a bit of profit.
Re: (Score:2)
Early five digits. :D
Re: (Score:2)
Only 11 away from being a 4-digit moniker. :)
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I think their concern is that US courts might start following the Indian court's views on what constitutes "obvious" tweaking for the sole purpose of extending a patent.
That fear is worth spending hundreds of millions in court to salve the terror of lost revenue on a global (including US) scale.
Not that they deserve money for trivial reforumulations, such as the "safer" Oxycontin packaging. The main drug itself has not changed so there should never have been a patent extension allowed. Packaging is j
Re: (Score:3)
It's not. But USA is a lot richer than India, so you can't really expect India's research capabilities to keep up. When USA starts to decline, other countries will take up the slack in new research. Get rid of the nationalistic view and realize we are all humans.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem for the devil's argument is that Pharma spends double the amount on advertizing that they do on research. This is about a greedy industry seeking to extract every last dollar it can, even if it means some poor folks on the other side of the planet will die. Not recouping research costs.
sigh (Score:2)
"The problem for the devil's argument is that Pharma spends double the amount on advertizing that they do on research. "
nope.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma... [forbes.com]
Re: (Score:2)
you quote FORBES to tell us that we should be thankful and grateful for the generosity of Pharma?
since when is forbes speaking for the little guy? they are whores to big business and anything they say should be assumed to be highly biased.
its pretty well known that pharma wastes more money (ads) than they use for real research. and, a lot of research is done at universities, where we have already funded!
Re: (Score:2)
Universities do great research on drug targets and tool compounds, but don't actually research new drugs that much, at least not compared to biotech/Pharma. That said, about 20-25% of new drugs are invented in universities.
Re: (Score:3)
Yup..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
"Pharmaceutical Companies Spent 19 Times More On Self-Promotion Than Basic Research: Report "
Re: (Score:2)
So the obvious counter to this, is all pharmaceutical research goes government and public funded. Successful drugs are then open to production by all facilities with licences to produce pharmaceuticals. Skipping all the 1000% profit margins, ludicrous luxury holidays for doctors, scams to sell patented drugs and all the other psychopathy currently associated with the industry.
Re: (Score:2)
Almost all of the new stuff already is. A vast amount of the commercial stuff ends up being little more than patent extension. Most of the rest is jumping on a public funded solution after a promising clinical trial.
One of the most disgusting excuses for a vast difference in prices between a US version of a vaccine and the prices in the rest of the world was "development costs". The vaccine in question was fun
Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India ... (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds odd, or the start of a joke, but I'm serious.
She ordered some variety of medicine from an online pharmacy (which one, I don't know) and had some heavy cognitive dissonance. 'Did I just give money to scammers?' She waited slightly longer than she expected to, and had the thought that she really had been taken for a ride ... but then they arrived, and (to her surprise) were postmarked India.
"They were cheap, and worked."
She'll be displeased to hear about just how far regulatory capture can go, in this arena ...
timothy
Re:Friend of mine just got cheap drugs from India (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. A friend of mine needed some medications, taken on a regular basis. IIRC he had some limited insurance, but it didn't cover squat in medication. He ordered them online from a pharmacy in Canada. A legitimate outfit - had to show he had the prescriptions and whatnot. The meds were drop shipped from Switzerland and India, complete with funny foreign return addresses and stamps. He saved a bundle. There were the real McCoy too, not some brand X knockoff. Switzerland and India was where they were made.
Even better is doggy Prozac. Apparently they have Prozac for dogs - and it's the exact same stuff, from the same factory, but at a fraction of the price. This one is 2nd hand, from my neighbor the veterinarian, but she's not a BS artist. A coworker's wife had a Prozac Rx, so hubby writes an Rx for their dog, and she takes it.
Re: (Score:3)
Even better is doggy Prozac. Apparently they have Prozac for dogs - and it's the exact same stuff, from the same factory, but at a fraction of the price. This one is 2nd hand, from my neighbor the veterinarian, but she's not a BS artist. A coworker's wife had a Prozac Rx, so hubby writes an Rx for their dog, and she takes it.
Looks like he finally found a way to stop her from eating the dogfood.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know how I feel about antidepressants for dogs, or any other non-human animal for that matter. Can dogs be demonstrably depressed to a degree that they require medication rather than love and exercise? Or is this something that people who got a dog too big for their yard give to placate their pet when it spends 90% of its miserable life in a tiny kennel in the basement so it doesn't shed fur all over the sofa?
Re: (Score:3)
Damn, now I'm depressed thinking about that poor miserable dog in the kennel in the basement. Maybe I need some doggy prozac.
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For the most part the online pills are as genuine as the stuff on thepiratebay. Sure, you can get burned either way, but it usually works (granted, being burned by counterfeit drugs is a much more serious problem).
The issue is that just as with thepiratebay somebody needs to actually pay to make the drugs. I'm all for that being the NIH or whatever, but right now very little is spent on drug clinical trials by anybody other than pharma companies. We need to change that if we really want to have a differe
Don't forget US taxpayers pay ALL of that research (Score:2, Insightful)
The Medicare/Medicaid drug reimbursement is already more than the private cost of research (plus reasonable production costs for those drugs).
As soon as I hear "Big " (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because you think all large companies are evil doesn't mean everyone else does.
Re: (Score:3)
You mean, you were looking for an excuse to stop listening. And found one.
Straw man. Look, this isn't hard story to grasp. Large, influential industries that wouldn't think a second before sending your job overseas for third world labor want the USG to make sure said third world labor pays first-world prices for their drugs.
Re:As soon as I hear "Big " (Score:4, Interesting)
Large, influential industries that wouldn't think a second before sending your job overseas for third world labor
Except that they didn't do that when developing these drugs. They paid first-world salaries for research, development, testing, more testing, still more testing, even more testing, and then regulation compliance. Without those first-world costs, there's no drug that you want to sell for third-world prices.
want the USG to make sure said third world labor pays first-world prices for their drugs.
The world wants the US to foot the bill for their drug research, and then once that hard part is done, sell the drugs for materials and menial labor cost? I don't think so. If the prices are so far out of balance, why don't they start their own drug research institute with third-world salaries, testing, and regulations?
Re: (Score:2)
They've already had their 17 years of patent protection and charged enough to recoup their costs and make a decent profit which is the social contract with patents. Now they change the colour of the pill or some such minor change and expect another 20 years.
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Now they change the colour of the pill or some such minor change and expect another 20 years.
In this particular instance, you're probably right.
My general point stands though. If the Indian government wants to provide access to modern pharmaceuticals at prices that Indians can afford, time for their government to issue some big-money loans to start an Indian pharmaceutical research group. India doesn't have that kind of money? Sell some debt and pay interest on it, just like the U.S. has been forced to do for years. If all these countries had to do their own original research, maybe the U.S. de
That's just what (Score:2)
Big Apathy want's you to do!
That's the gop health care plan for you (Score:2)
They want big business to profit of sick people and don't like stuff like medicare or medicaid
Okay, they are leaning on the US to discourage it. (Score:2)
FTFY (Score:2, Interesting)
>big pharma [...] is the number one creator of new drugs
>big pharma [...] is the number one creator of upper-class-only drugs
Fixed that for you. Do I have to fix the shitty beta too?
What's the point of creating new drugs if no one can make and use them?
>big pharma [...] is the number one creator of upper-class-only drugs
And are we worried that will change? The number one creator will instead be the middle-class "commoners"? Makers gonna make? Gonna make something THE HUMAN FUCKING RACE will benefit
Re: (Score:2)
big pharma [...] is the number one creator of upper-class-only drugs
Fixed that for you.
I would even say it as "big pharma [...] is the number one creator of profitable drugs "
Look at statins. They are inefficient at reducing death, and have many adverse effects. The goal of this drug is not health, it is profit.
Big Numbers! Give Us Money! (Score:3)
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.
Ahh, very large numbers without context. Does such a good job of sounding like it means something. Here's some context: 70% increase in profits [thinkprogress.org] in the past 10 years, and we have way more drugs available than we can afford. Increasing government imposed restrictions on competition to drive up market price is what you do when a critical industry is having problems, not when they're flush with cash and demand and prices are skyrocketing. It's freaking econ 101 ferfucksake.
Also: Fuck beta. I am not the audience, I am one of the authors of this site. I am Slashdot. This is a debate community. I will leave if it becomes some bullshit IT News 'zine. And I don't think Dice has the chops to beat the existing competitors in that space.
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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.
Ahh, very large numbers without context.
There is a little context:
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.
So some of that research is being spent on patentable variations rather than better cures, which is a waste of time and money when looking at the complete healthcare system. Commercial research also produces actually useful drugs, but perhaps it would be more efficient to let governments lead
sigh (Score:2)
You know those article have been debunked, right?
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I don't. Why don't you provide a link to said debunking?
Just because its new doesn't necessarily mean good (Score:2)
Big Pharma does not create new drugs (Score:2)
Please look at this TED http://www.ted.com/talks/maria... [ted.com]
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Virtually all the drugs on the market had their clinical trials paid for by pharma companies. For each one there were many more that had an equal level of spending but were demonstrated to be unsafe and thus never made it onto the market.
It is true that the initial mechanisms and sometimes even the lead molecules are discovered elsewhere, but there are thousands of these discovered every year and most of them will do nothing good for your health, It takes billions of dollars in trials to figure out which
Huge success (Score:4, Insightful)
No magic bullet. (Score:5, Informative)
Someone has to pay the bill.
Glaxo spent more than $350 million over 25 years to develop [a malaria] vaccine for military personnel and travelers and expects to invest an additional $260 million to complete development. But Glaxo was reluctant to pay for pediatric trials in impoverished nations on its own, so the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided $200 million through the nonprofit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative to drive development and testing over the finish line.
Hope for a Malaria Vaccine [nytimes.com] [Oct 1013]
Bad either way... (Score:3, Informative)
I am not a shill for the drug companies by any means. That being said, I think the third world's energies would be better spent dealing with their quality issues before they got butt hurt over this move by big pharma's lobby. In reality, drugs sourced from India and/or China are a crap shoot. Read Derek Lowe's blog "In the Pipeline [corante.com]" for information on this industry and pharmacological chemistry.
Yes, India may be getting unfairly punished for it's ability to manufacture drugs inexpensively, but unfair things go on all the time - just look at Slashdot beta!
No No No No No drugs from India (Score:2)
The big problem is that some pharma manufacturers in India make crap.
They know they're making crap and they're proud of it.
Ripping people off is part of business culture everywhere, but they don't seem to make a distinction between cheating people out of their money and cheating them out of their lives.
The problem is that everyone knows they're making crap in India, but no one can come right out and say it because lawyers will be all over whoever says it. regardless of proven past practices.
Here's an exampl
Bull sh*t on OP (Score:2)
That is not true. That research is done in universities often with taxpayer money and big pharma snaps it up for a song. Watch Big Bucks, Big Pharma https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] or read Marcia Angell - The Truth About the Drug Companies, Ben Goldacre
Outsourcing... (Score:3)
They want it both ways...pure psychopathic behavior.
Here is the exact quote from Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers...âoeWe did not develop this product (Nexavar) for the Indian market, letâ(TM)s be honest. We developed this product for western patients who can afford this product, quite honestly, it is an expensive product.â
Poor Indians should die. If this is not psychopathic behavior I don't know what is! This guy needs help.
And don't tell me "it costs a lot to develop these drugs". Yes, it does and the costs are recovered with sufficient profit margin from the first world.
LOL. (Score:2)
Good for India (Score:2)
It's good to see a government actually putting the interests of its people (millions of them) above that of a few rich business owners...
It's a choice between a bit less profit for some rich drug companies, or millions of people suffering and dying, because these people simply cannot afford what the drug companies are trying to charge.
The whole idea of people profiting from human suffering is utterly abhorrent.
As for research, research of this kind by for-profit companies is a huge conflict of interest - th
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. I hate to be the guy asking "why is this on Slashdot", but WTF? This is a purely political click-trolling story. This is not what Slashdot is for.
You know, I'm actually OK with the blatant Slashvertisements, as long as they're geek-interest products. Man's got to pay the bills; I understand. But this pure-political story BS needs to stop!
Re:BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is pretty clear, it is about Imaginary Property (IP). The same pixie dust that makes copyright, trademarks, and patents.
And they're bullying a poor country like "hey, all these medicines that we were not going to sell because you can't afford, you are not allowed to make them yourselves; tell your population to just die." Yeah, pretty nice.
Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how pointing out greed can be interpreted as communism. Gotta admire Faux News & co. brainwashing efficiency.
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Gray markets are a real problem though. People in the US already buy drugs from India, and someone has to pay for drug research. (Of course, a true communist would reply: it will be free, because taxes will pay for it.)
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someone has to pay for drug research. (Of course, a true communist would reply: it will be free, because taxes will pay for it.)
Indeed, someone has to pay for gram-negative antibiotics research urgently. Gee, I wonder why no big-pharma company is researching it.[/sarcasm]
Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES (Score:5, Informative)
Taxes have nothing to do with communism. In a communism all productive assets is owned by the state. That means farmland, power plants, factories, and all deeded property. Personal property is excluded; the state doesn't care about your model train collection.
Intellectual property would fall under state deeded property just as housing does. That's because only the state manages property deeds and assigns ownership. That the ownership is automatically assigned to the state merely simplifies bureaucratic administrative overhead. The state might be inefficient in aggregate, but not so in the Registration of Deeds office.
I know it's nit picky, but your statement conflates that communist system with every other government system imagined. Every government that has existed taxed its citizens to provide for a common good. Governments tax to build roads, bridges, schools, military and police departments. New research and development is funded through education grants. For example: the internet. Also: medical research. In fact, a lot of tax money is spent on drug development.
Perhaps you think government shouldn't do these things. Some even think government should be abolished. But to argue the abolishment of government on the pretense that taxes equals communism mixes terms and beliefs such that the rationale is nothing more than nonsense. It's no argument. It's not anticommunist or pro-USA or holds any ideological consistency.
Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES (Score:5, Insightful)
Much of the expense, and focus, of drug research of the US is on new patents, not on new treatments.
Let me take you a visit to the world of patent history: Welcome to insulin, which was released *with a free patent* because of its discoverer's desire to help humanity, immediately. The *refinement* and processing of insulin has, fortunately for profits, been filled with many patentable processes. Business has benefited, and there have actually been useful improvements in its purity, which helps prevent allergic reactions, and its price. The original refinement from slaughterhouse fetuses, to avoid contamination by pancreatic juices, was effective but unsustainable as we diabetics survived longer and became a larger market. Refinement from pancreases from adult slaughterhouse animals filled the supply, and was very profitable for decades.
But the last round of significant patents was running out. Factories worldwide were geared up to operate, outside the control of the Eli Lilly company, and to halve the price of insulin. What to do, what to do? Wait! We can patent *human* insulin! By first modifying animal insulin with new ly patented enzyme treatments, and by eventually using genetically modified e.coli to produce it without animals, we now have "pure human" insulin, to the benefit of diabetics worldwide! It's human insulin, what could be better?
The answer is that almost all other sources of insulin better. Human insulin is faster acting, but that's pointless when you're wearing an insulin pump and the updake is much faster *anyway*. The claims about animal insulin leading to insulin resistance or allergy were due to the *impurities*, which are almost nonexistent in modern processing of animal insulins. And human insulin actually contributes to hypoglycemic unawareness which gave me one heck of a time when I couldn't get animal insulin anymore. (I tried!) Human insulin does not provide a single benefit over animal insulin to its users, and the deficits are very real. Other fast acting insulin mixtures, have been available for *decades, and long acting versions for different shot based insulin treatments. They're now all now replaced by "human" insulins that are roughly twice the price, even with inflation
So as a diabetic who's faced this sort of thing, the "Big Pharma" companies can go play "Rites of Spring" on my !@#$. They've demonstrated that they prefer profits on new and actively inferior patent-ptoected products over the health and safety of millions of medication who absolutely require this medication. I cut companies like Lilly *no* slack in legislation or in the courts or in global treaties. They've abused us for decades, and I hope their leadership rots.
Re: BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES (Score:5, Interesting)
...someone has to pay for drug research...
Well, that $130 Billion works out to about $415 per person in the US. Government and charaties and the like paid about half of that and "industry" paid the other half. Total healthcare spending from that same PDF was $2,939 Billion (although those numbers are a bit confusing because it seems to include the money industry spent on the research added to the amount industry was paid by patients). In any case, that's about $9390 per person in the US, or around 45 times the amount industry spent on research. So, if a few percent of total healthcare spending goes towards the pharm/biotech/medical devices industry, they're doing just fine. Also the answer to who is paying for medical research is that the taxpayers and patients are. Frankly, if you look at the math, it's pretty ridiculous. If half of the research costs aren't going to be paid by industry anyway, and it's such a small fraction of the total healthcare costs, why not just double or triple what the government is paying for research and stop giving a cent of it to for profit industries. Then, do all the research through public research institutions and relegate industry to a manufacturing role. Let them all be 'generic' manufacturers competing on production of the same drugs. In the meantime the few extra percent that would raise total healthcare expenditure by would be offset by the much larger drop in healthcare spending due to the fact that a bunch of artificial monopolies just vanished.
Now, I know it's tragic that people who didn't pay might also benefit from this research. Even worse than the people in other countries are the untold future generations of humans who will also benefit with better health and happier lives without paying for it. Bunch of filthy freeloading descendants.
Re:BETA NEEDS TO BE RAPED BY HORSES (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't hate to be the guy to ask you, but did you really just fall off the turnip truck? This is a story on drug patents. Slashdot runs stories on patents and greedy companies extracting money from them allllll the fucking time, and twice on Thursdays.
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to read another post by soulskill cron
Thanks, that one made me giggle.
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Canada has an equivalent system (Health Canada) and cheaper drugs then the US. We also have a different copyright system which allows generic drugs to be available sooner. Wonder if that helps drive the prices down?
US Solution? Ban cheap canadian drugs from canada as they were "not tested" or such.
Re:Wouldn't it be something (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't really believe things like the "FDA" is what is driving up the price to you?
Have a little respect. Here in the US such beliefs are a religion to some people. Must be Satan (a/k/a the FDA) driving the prices up, let the Holy Market prevail! Ok, it actually is the gubmint, but the part that's responsible for enforcing monopolies for ever greater profit, not the FDA.
US Solution? Ban cheap canadian drugs from canada as they were "not tested" or such.
Yeah, same drugs from the same factory, but they're magically tainted by passing through Canada. OTOH you have some online pharmacies (legitimate outfits) that will drop ship the stuff to people in the US.
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How else would "important life saving" medication like yet another "blue pill" come about?
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There is a ton and a half of designer drugs with minor modifications, the companies are searching for 'cure' to boldness and erectile dysfunction, but thousands of fairly rare conditions will never be addressed, because under such system it is uneconomical.
Have a look at the new drugs approved last year: MS (2 drugs), multiple myeloma, COPD (2 drugs), HIV, melanoma (2 drugs), lymphoma, fungal infections, prostate and bone cancer, diabetes, depression, influenza, epilepsy, lung cancer, leukemia, dyspareunia, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, osteoporosis. Plus a cure for Hepatitis C. Yep, nothing but boner pills
Even the crazy Europeans don't do what FDA does in terms of adding costs based on 'efficacy' requirements
Would you be talking about the FDA's fast track and breakthrough programs which accelerate the drug approval process when a drug candidate might grea
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Don't bother. You're talking to roman_mir, who won't be content until the government consists of one guy in a room with no power and even less funding. Down with government! Long Live our Corporate Overlords!
Re:Wouldn't it be something (Score:5, Informative)
Get rid of FDA, get rid of government and basically costs drop dramatically that prices could truly be taken down
The FDA doesn't keep drug prices high, they keep people alive. Returning to the days of snake oil is not the solution.
The problem is that patents can be extended by silly little changes that have no real effect, and the world is deprived of the invention or charged unconscionable amounts of money. Glivec (Imatinib) the first of the exceptionally expensive cancer drugs, costing $92,000 a year. Yet its development costs were not that great, and production costs have fallen dramatically.(especially in India).
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The last thing any big corporation wants is "individual freedom". The last thing the ruling elite want is "individual freedom".
John Galt is a virulent sociopath. He's managed to take every aspect of the Enlightenment and twist it and corrupt it until people don't know which way is up. America was a pretty impressive experiment, even with all i
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There's a word for people who keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome.
Personally, I'm rather tired of seeing this shit on every single story... I don't like beta either, but all this repeated drivel does, which can only be classified as off-topic and essentially spam, is actively degrade what usefulness the website actually has before beta even becomes mandatory.
So shut the fuck up... I'm pretty sure they heard you the first time. If you don't think that they are l
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Once beta becomes mandatory, it's too late, and those who actually drive the conversations will just leave.
And if that's what Dice wants, that's what they'll get.
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That's absolutely right...
So why start driving people away already by repeating the same thing over and over and over, blocking the views of potentially other interesting posts by people that are still here?
I get that people are upset about it... but this kind of shit is basically just holding the entire slashdot readership hostage... blocking *EVERYBODY* from seeing useful posts because their screens are filled with "fuck beta this" and "fuck beta that", using up a tremendous amount of screen real est
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As you may or may not have noticed from my slashdot id, I've been here quite a while myself. But my point is that these kinds of comments are incredibly off-topic... and don't actually help the board be the best that it can be.
All it is doing is turning the website to hell even faster than beta... At least for the time being I can turn beta off, but what I can do shut people up who won't stop bitching about it?
Persistence is fine... but management has made it clear that they aren't listening to these
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I believe it may have already reached that point. The fuck beta spam that pervades every single story on here is tiresome, repetitive, and actively gets in the way of seeing genuinely interesting posts that are relevant to the topic being discussed. If that's going to go away when beta happens, that's genuinely unfortunate, but why start fucking it up for everybody before beta is even here? Really, this kind of drivel just seems petty, spiteful
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I agree.with your sig... complaining about beta is pointless. But to be honest, I really don't like it that much. and I think yours is the very firs post I've ever seen here that actually had something genuinely positive to say about it. I have no doubt there are probably others, but I can't think of any I've personally seen.
Speaking for myself, the ability to review your recent posts and see at aa glance how they've been moderated, if at all, and how many responses they have produced is seriously la
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Who modded this insightful? This is anti-informative, whatever that is. US doesn't 'outsource' drug production to India. Indian firms read patents and create generics from it.
Re:Karma (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, to legally copy a drug in India, you'd have to come up with a new process for manufacturing it. Indian IP law recognizes only manufacturing processes, not the final chemicals themselves or the purpose for which they're used.
Case in point: in America, you can take a drug like Proscar, approved in 5mg strength for treating prostate problems, and get a brand new patent for a 1mg strength used for hair growth. In India, you'd be politely told, "No" when you applied for the second patent, because as far as Indian IP law is concerned, unless you come up with a new way to manufacture the drug, you've done nothing worthy of patent protection.
The same goes for extended-release forms. If you're taking an old drug and coating bits with dissolving coating, India will yawn and say, "sorry, no new patent for you. " You'd have to come up with something groundbreaking, like OROS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... [wikipedia.org] ), which makes drugs that would otherwise have intolerably-short half-lives viable.
Although Indian IP law doesn't regard ER forms as necessarily being special, India's unwillingness to allow patents on anything besides the manufacturing process actually opens the door to Indian pharmaceutical companies releasing ER forms LONG before the original patent expires, and before the American developer of the original drug comes out with its own version. If an Americana pharma company gets a patent on a drug & plans to wait until the first patent is about to expire before patenting an ER form, an Indian company who comes up with an alternate manufacturing process can blow their plan out of the water and release an improved ER form YEARS sooner.
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That has got nothing to do with GP or my comment, and hence off-topic.
Unless 'All American' tablets are in fact being manufactured in India, there is no outsourcing going on.
Then freaking leave (Score:2)
whiner.
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Mostly agreed, although i think pharm companies should just be manufacturing, with the formulae being readily available so that there is competition among manufacturing drugs.
Research should be done by non profits (charities and nationalised health departments etc), if you allow for-profit companies to do research then you have a conflict of interest as they will always design treatments to maximise profits rather than for maximum benefit to the patient - eg keeping someone sick and treating their symptoms
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What do you think will happen to all the money that gets saved because competition among manufacturers has pushed the price of drugs right down? It's not going to disappear...
A lot of research isn't conducted by pharma companies anyway, its done by universities, charities and government funded healthcare systems... And those government funded healthcare systems will have more money to spend on research if they're spending less of it on buying drugs.
Also you will see better results, because the goal of the r