US Secures World Stock of Key COVID-19 Drug Remdesivir (theguardian.com) 391
The U.S. has bought up virtually all the stocks of remdesivir, perhaps the most closely watched experimental drug to treat COVID-19. The Guardian reports: Remdesivir, the first drug approved by licensing authorities in the U.S. to treat Covid-19, is made by Gilead and has been shown to help people recover faster from the disease. The first 140,000 doses, supplied to drug trials around the world, have been used up. The Trump administration has now bought more than 500,000 doses, which is all of Gilead's production for July and 90% of August and September. "President Trump has struck an amazing deal to ensure Americans have access to the first authorised therapeutic for Covid-19," said the U.S. health and human services secretary, Alex Azar. "To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it. The Trump administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for Covid-19 and secure access to these options for the American people."
The drug, which was trialled in the Ebola epidemic but failed to work as expected, is under patent to Gilead, which means no other company in wealthy countries can make it. The cost is around $3,200 per treatment of six doses, according to the US government statement. The deal was announced as it became clear that the pandemic in the U.S. is spiralling out of control. Anthony Fauci, the country's leading public health expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Senate the U.S. was sliding backwards.
The drug, which was trialled in the Ebola epidemic but failed to work as expected, is under patent to Gilead, which means no other company in wealthy countries can make it. The cost is around $3,200 per treatment of six doses, according to the US government statement. The deal was announced as it became clear that the pandemic in the U.S. is spiralling out of control. Anthony Fauci, the country's leading public health expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Senate the U.S. was sliding backwards.
I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if Orange Man has shares in this company?
(quick google)
Why yes. Yes, he does.
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Confirmed [fool.com], worth six figures back in 2016. Wonder what they're worth now.
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Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite everything, but literally it could be anything. That's why it is a norm with presidents to put their financial assets in a blind trust.
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Say, if he has stock in this drug company, then why was he promoting the 6 cents per pill hydroxychloroquine? The president's critics seldom make sense, and this is one of those times. Just amazing... people say whatever occurs to them, without regard to facts or even if it makes sense.
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
"haven't heard him hype hydroxychloroquine in over a month at least" - Unfortunately that won't stop Democrats from blathering on about it.
Or the president:
Trump, June 15: "The only place we don’t get necessarily reports are coming out of Alex’s agency or wherever they come from. I don’t understand that, Alex. What is it exactly? Because I have heard — I’ve had so many people that were so thrilled with the results from hydroxy. So, what is that exactly?
Azar: Well, at your direction, we continue to study, especially in earlier phase — so a lot of the data that has come out that was more negative was people who were quite ill in the hospital.
Trump: People that were, like, seriously ill. Like, they weren’t going to make it. “Let’s give them a little hydroxy.” And then they don’t make it. And they say, “Oh, wow, maybe the president was wrong.” All I know is that we’ve had some tremendous reports. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they think it saved their lives.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I tend to think (and truly hope) you are correct, this underscores the biggest issue with Trump. The fact he refused to divest himself from his companies and assets leads to legitimate speculation about things like this. We didn't worry about this with other presidents because their assets were all in a blind trust so they didn't know exactly what was in there. Since Trump refused to do this and refused to divest himself from his companies, even if he is acting in good faith (which I am not saying he is doing) there will be questions about it because he very well could be acting in bad faith. By him keeping everything, it leads to these exact questions about whether the president is doing things for the country or only for himself, which leads to division and lack of faith in the administration.
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Trying to earn that "doubletalk" handle?
No one was ever "worried" about the things you bring up because they weren't "things" except that Trump, and Republicans generally. wants to make them things.
Trump is easily the least scrutinized modern president because he is a criminal with a lifetime's experience hiding evidence and he has the full force of an administration covering up evidence of his crimes.
"Weaponize their power"? What a joke. We have not witnessed in decades "going after political enemies" li
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Bullshit. Give a single example where any previous president was criticized for benefiting from a strong economy. Should be easy, since every previous modern president has released tax returns. Not Trump, though, wonder why? Trump critics are critics because Trump is a criminal money launderer for foreign organized crime. Those critics will be "pleased" only when that is addressed.
There is no lie Trump supports aren't willing to attempt.
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Even if we assume what you say is true (which quite frankly it isn't), you think the solution is for Trump to do the worst possible thing and the thing that can most easily be abused? If he can't make everyone happy, he should just do the worst thing and profiteer as much as possible because some people are going to complain? If that is truly what you believe, then you can't complain about anyone or anything because they are never going to make everyone happy so they should just do what they want and screw
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I find it curious that no other public official is being held to this standard?
Every other public official of high enough office does this and has done so for decades. And the fact that you don't understand how a blind trust works doesn't mean its not a common thing. It means you are not rich enough to know how finance works.
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Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
it will remain expensive and difficult to make for quite a while.
It will magically become a lot easier after the patent expires.
(Also a lot less effective at treating people)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some generics manufacturers making this now in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and so on, who can ship to 127 countries.
So it's just the west that is beholden to Gilead.
Amazing, when this drug was discovered to help with Covid19 recoveries, it was reported to be a 'cheap generic' - so the company must have locked it down massively since then and raised the prices.
Yay, big pharma, eh?
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https://www.statnews.com/2020/... [statnews.com]
this one talks about Remdesivir being hard to make.
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Informative)
From the source's source:
> One metric ton of remdesivir is sufficient API to manufacture 900,000 courses of treatment, without allowance for any losses during formulation.
They don't account for losses, and estimates are around 12% of inputs make it to outputs: https://www.acsh.org/news/2020... [acsh.org]
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Remember, this is just looking at the marginal cost - what it takes to make 1 more dose, basically.
I figure that like a lot of other experimental stuff, the static costs are drastically higher.
For example, with an F-22 fighter craft, if you average out the development costs over all manufactured airframes, the development costs are the greatest portion of the aircraft.
In this case, it costs roughly a billion dollars to get FDA approval for something.
If you estimate that you'll sell 1 million courses of trea
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I would take this as more accurate https://www.jhsph.edu/news/new... [jhsph.edu]. So 19 million versus one billion. It depends upon how many times a drug fails and is changed before it succeeds or the right bribes are paid. Don't forget the development costs also includes all the costs of the company, so sales cost, advertising, lobbyist payments, bribes, all add to the inflated bottom, as does patent shifting. So design it in the USA, shift the patent overseas with lower patent taxes and times the price by 1,000 and c
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Haha, great read. Thanks. This really illustrates the difficulties well for us non-chemists:
What does this gibberish mean? n-BuLi is short for n-butyllithium, which bursts into flame if exposed to oxygen or water. (TMS)Cl is short for trimethylsilyl chloride, another charmer, which also reacts like a madman with water and will cheerfully eat your skin. ... Some reactions have to be run at very low temperatures. This is one of them. If you mix this stuff together at room temperature your internal organs would be found in several time zones.
Re:I wonder... (Score:4)
That $10 figure is pretty misleading. By the accounting methods used to get that, every piece of software ever costs $0.
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Trump declared his confidence in HCQ before this. If HCQ works there is little - or at least less - reason to use the much more expensive Remdesivir.
It's a stupid hypothesis. This decision is not guided by Trump thinking 'what are my Gilead shares telling me'.
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https://www.oge.gov/web/OGE.nsf/0/E4B0AAE5BC3A3FDF852582B40061FDA6/$FILE/Assets.pdf
Huh. A federal employee involved in funding decisions for a company, who also owns stock in that company, can _go_to_jail_. Such ethics violations are covered under the criminal code.
Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
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You think Trump is so money motivated why does he donate his pay cheque to charities?
To fool people like you?
Think about it: How much is his pay cheque worth compared to deals like this?
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You think Trump is so money motivated why does he donate his pay cheque to charities?
To fool people like you?
Think about it: How much is his pay cheque worth compared to deals like this?
Indeed. The US president just earns $400'000 a year. That is not much. The term "peanuts" comes to mind. But great for an empty symbolic gesture!
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$400,000? Pfft. He can charge more that for turning up at a dinner party. Even Paris Hilton could charge $750,000 when she was at peak celeb, how much for POTUS?
If you want to go to one of his parties it's $100,000 per head and an extra $50,000 for the Kodak moment.
https://money.com/heres-what-2... [money.com]
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Re:I wonder... (Score:4, Informative)
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You think Trump is so money motivated why does he donate his pay cheque to charities?
Tax deductions. Seriously this isn't just one of the oldest tricks in the book, it's one of the few that are available to the general public. You don't use the deduction scheme available to limit your taxable income? Well on behalf of Americans everywhere I thankyou for your voluntary over contribution to tax system.
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I seem to remember Trump promising to fix this problem.
How's the swamp draining coming along?
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Open it up (Score:5, Insightful)
If the drug is actually effective how about Gilead opens it up to other companies to manufacture as well? Or the Government forces them to. Wouldn't that be the right thing to do?
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Wouldn't that be the right thing to do?
What does that have to do with anything?
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Perhaps all the companies whose drugs are currently being trialed as potential COVID-19 treatments should cross-license the rights to produce all the drugs to each other.
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US government ensures the 'haves' dictate economic policy to the rest of the planet and have political power plus the 'have-nots' haven't political power.
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If the drug is actually effective how about Gilead opens it up to other companies to manufacture as well? Or the Government forces them to. Wouldn't that be the right thing to do?
Not fast enough. Should there actually be a long-term demand higher than capacity for this stuff, this will happen. But making pharmaceuticals is nothing you can set up in a few days or weeks. Remember that quality problems may well maim or kill here and open the manufacturer up to liability and loss of reputation.
Re:Open it up (Score:5, Informative)
Many countries have laws that if the company refuses, they can force licensing of the patent, if not just ignore it altogether. Which means if it proves useful, it's only really a decree away from being made by the generics.
So the US may have bought up the supply, but if it proves highly useful many countries could simply ignore the patent and manufacture it under public health exemptions.
It's also silly, since it's made in Canada and packaged in the US, and the US-Canada border is currently closed. So politics can come into play by simply blocking the export of the raw drug to the US packaging facility too.
Then again, it's fairly expensive - $390/vial, with a recommended course of 6 vials over 4 days so a course of treatment is nearly $2400, so 500k doses ...
Re:Open it up (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only does this send a lousy international political message (panders to his "US first" base though, which is the point), that may well see the US at the back of the queue if a vaccine is developed elsewhere, but if you're reading between the lines it's also a good indication of just how bad the White House believes things are going to get, regardless of what they are saying in public.
Re: Open it up (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question to ask is why the US suddenly feels it needs to lock in 500k courses of an expensive drug that is only really applicable to people in critical care?
According to the article it's 500k doses, not courses. At 6 doses per patient that's about 83k courses, which is on the low side given that the US has already had in excess of 100k deaths.
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Cronyism. Don't make the mistake of thinking the USA government suddenly gives a shit about COVID-19.
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The real question to ask is why the US suddenly feels it needs to lock in 500k courses of an expensive drug that is only really applicable to people in critical care?
For the same reason people panic-hoarded toilet paper when all this started instead of just buying as much as they need?
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Can someone explain who pays for this medication? Say you get COVID-19 and are also unemployed, no healthcare, can you get it?
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Can someone explain who pays for this medication? Say you get COVID-19 and are also unemployed, no healthcare, can you get it?
If you're unemployed, you should be able to sign up for medicaid, which would pay for it.
The healthcare problem in the USA for provisioning is basically a "doughnut hole" problem.
If you have BELOW a certain income, you can get "free" healthcare from the government.
If you're ABOVE a different, higher, income, you can afford to buy insurance without any real problems.
The problem exists for those that are between the two, especially just above the cutoff for medicaid or fully subsidized plans from the exchange
there is an "out" for emergency in patent treaties (Score:3)
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Yeah. There may be subsequent payments for a backdated licence, but Governments are going to manufacture a life saving drug if they have to.
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There is as much proof of Remdesivir working as there is of HCQ working. There is no decisive proof pro or against for either.
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There are several studies now showing that Remdesivir works well at speeding up the recovery from Covid 19 by a few days.
On the one hand, this is good - in a second spike situation (alternatively, USA Plan A Extended First Spike) you can get people out of the way quicker and thus increase the number of people you can care for. Also in private healthcare nations, $4k for medication is cheaper than 4 days healthcare.
But it also doesn't help with death rates, or bad cases. It simply speeds up recovery.
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Hmmmm... no proof of HCQ working.
Note here:
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
that India has a "deaths per million" rate of 13, while the same website shows the USA as having a deaths per million rate of 395.
See here:
https://medicalxpress.com/news... [medicalxpress.com]
that India like HCQ and see here:
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
that India is doubling down on the drug.
The Indians have been gulping this stuff like tic-tacs, and their rank in Deaths per million amongst all nations is 103rd. The USA's rank in deaths per milli
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unless you believe in ridiculous coincidence that something else is saving Indians from the virus
Phaal curry. That stuff is spicy enough to burn ANY infection to a crispy cinder!
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If you mean the government to incentivise the patent owner to allow others to manufacture under license (and pay royalties of course), then absolutely the right thing.
If you mean the government to allow other companies to copy the drug and ignore the patent, a really bad and shortsighted idea. Forget the short term effects of the government stealing intellectual property, but even assuming they can assert their iron fist and squash any legal challenges, no biotech company out there will ever work on any pot
Re:Open it up (Score:4, Insightful)
And then what are we going to do when the next time we need a pandemic drug one isn't available because drug companies know the government will just let everyone else produce and sell it even if they research it?
You have to look at the incentives and consequences you're creating, not just the short-term goals.
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And then what are we going to do when the next time we need a pandemic drug one isn't available because drug companies know the government will just let everyone else produce and sell it even if they research it?
You have to look at the incentives and consequences you're creating, not just the short-term goals.
A company's not going to make any profits if nearly everyone is dead. But hey, if they'd rather let civilization die because saving it isn't "incentive" enough, I guess that's their prerogative.
"Amazing deal" = hoarding (Score:2, Insightful)
Like any ass just thinking of themselves.
Re:"Amazing deal" = hoarding (Score:4, Insightful)
It could backfire very badly too. Say the Oxford trial or that Germany company develops a viable vaccine in Europe, or the one in China works out. Countries that just got screwed by the US buying up all the stock are unlikely to be feeling generous towards it now.
Re:"Amazing deal" = hoarding (Score:4, Informative)
Excellent point. I also doubt that anybody has forgotten the Chloroquine hoarding. Such an utterly stupid act.
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You mean the chloroquine hoarding that every single fucking country did?
"Government secures supplies for own people" is hardly a fucking scandal.
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I'm not one to defend the orange retard, but this is precisely something the government *should* be doing. Ultimately it's in the best interest of a country to put it's people first. I said back when the story broke about the alleged negotiations between Trump and a German vaccine manufacturer. Ironically all the Trump supporters were jumping on the "fake news" bandwagon, which was curious to me since it's the job of the president to put their people first. While it's a dick move to the rest of the world it
Costs $10 to make (Score:3, Informative)
For remdesivir, we used evidence on the cost of producing the next course of therapy from an article by Hill et all in the Journal of Virus Eradication (2020). Their methods sought to determine the “minimum” costs of production by calculating the cost of active pharmaceutical ingredients, which is combined with costs of excipients, formulation, packaging and a small profit margin. Their analysis calculated a total cost of producing the “final finished product” of $9.32 US for a 10-day course of treatment. We rounded that amount up to $10 for a 10-day course. If a 5-day course of treatment becomes a recommended course of therapy, then the marginal cost would accordingly shrink to $5.
Re:Costs $10 to make (Score:5, Insightful)
It is regulated. About 7% profit (Score:5, Insightful)
> The profit on medicine should be regulated.
Compare the annual net profit in the pharmaceutical industry vs other industries, such as say software development, dentistry, real estate, whatever. You'll find pharmaceuticals make about as money as other businesses, though making medicine isn't in the top 10 most profitable industries.
How can that be so and why, when you hear the marginal cost of producing another dose?
Mostly, 88% of drugs that get researched and developed to the point of trials don't get approved an generate zero revenue. Meaning Gillead has to spend a couple billion dollars to work o with ten different medications in order to have one that they can sell at all.
https://www.policymed.com/2014... [policymed.com]
The one medication that makes it has to pay for the nine that didn't, or the company is out of business and we have no medicine.
I said the profit is regulated. How so?
Suppose a world existed in which auto industry has a profit of about 5%, entertainment 6%, pharmaceuticals 55%. You're Warren Buffet or Michael Bloomberg or Rene R. Would you invest your money in a new car company, a new entertainment company, or a new pharmaceutical company? If pharmaceuticals would earn you ten times as much, which would you invest in?
Obviously if pharmaceutical companies made a lot more money, everyone would invest in making new pharmaceutical companies! When we had 50,000 new pharmaceutical companies competing, what do you think that would do to profit margins, if there 50,000 new competitors?
Self-interest ensures that the profitability of particular types of companies is never much higher than any other type. Not for long. (After adjusting for risk, you'd probably choose a guaranteed 5% profit over an unlikely possibility of making 15%, but probably losing all of your money).
Self-interest, investor "greed" regulates profits in an industry. Because if pharmaceutical companies made a ton of profit, investors would keep making more pharmaceutical companies, until there were more companies than there are people.
> There is a reason drugs and health is so much more affordable in Canada or Europe, ...
Drugs cost less essentially because Canada gets the US leftovers - they don't develop new medicines. The US develops new medicines and pays the cost of doing so.
Health care arguably costs more in Canada. Calling your health insurance bill a tax doesn't make it dissappear. Then you get to wait six weeks to see a specialist whom you could see the next day in the US.
99 years ago (Score:3)
> and I'm sure diabetics in the US are grateful for the Canadian "leftover" of insulin.
Yep, 99 years ago, in 1921 a Canadian discovered something important. Decades later, Canada switched to government health care.
Do you think the 1950s switch to government health care caused the 1921 discovery of insulin
> but it is an argument that you are going to lose spectacularly
I don't think we're going to spend time arguing this, if your arguments are "we got ine 99 years ago" or "government health care is grea
Re: Costs $10 to make (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's just that the pharmaceutical companies charge whatever the local markets tolerate.
Most European countries have a single payer system which means they have much bigger clout in negotiating prices. The USA on the other hand ... well, it's a mess and that is reflected in the cost of health-care and medicine.
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Exactly this, the NHS (UK health service) is the biggest health service in the world with a budget of £134,000,000,000. They often lead negotiations in partnership with other health services in Europe. On a similar note they are the 5th largest employer on earth behind (US Dept Defense, Chinese Army, Walmart, McDonalds).
What this also means is that they are effectively the financial backers for laboratories and companies for the development of drugs that they deem important for meeting their care du
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Medicare only has about 60-70 million people in it's insurance, but as I mentioned it's a mess. For example, Medicare aren't allowed to negotiate the prices and they have to pay what the pharmaceuticals demand.
I know there where some talks about the "Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act" that was supposed ensure that Medicare could negotiate the prices but I haven't kept up with it and if it was legislated or not.
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Nope, not the same reason because many of them are. But you seem to have Stockholm syndrome.
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But you're forgetting the cost of development and testing.
Re:Costs $10 to make (Score:5, Insightful)
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If Trump just ordered half a million doses for $3000+ each then the R&D has been covered a few times over.
Re:Costs $10 to make (Score:5, Interesting)
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Unfettered greed. It's the American way!
Already available in India (Score:5, Informative)
Gilead gave a free license to 5 Indian companies to make a Generic copy 2 months back and the first batch of 40000 vials just got delivered to Indian hospitals this week. till now they have been using the doses donated by Gilead. Out of the million doses Gilead donated, 750K went to countries around the world. US, Mexcio and Brazil are probably the only ones running out of RDV at this point. The Indian companies are authorized to sell the generic in 127 poorer countries while Gilead supplies the 80 richer ones. The copy made by the Indian companies are 80 dollars a vial. If richer countries run out of the donated doses and the Gilead suppply is hogged by US, they will get it from India.
Re:Already available in India (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if it doesn't reduce deaths, speeding recovery could be extremely valuable in situations when hospitals are swamped and overcapacity.
(Note: I'm not a Trump supporter; I'm not even American. But it could well still be a helpful treatment.)
"Under patent" doesn't mean it can't be made. (Score:2)
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But if you do ignore the patents, who will invest in developing the next important drug, knowing others will just steal the tech from them?
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Raising the price if demand far exceeds production capacities is a natural thing happening with everything on the free market. It is beneficial, because it motivates other companies to join the race in developing alternatives.
To expand upon this (Score:2)
Indeed, you are correct. With drugs, you have a problem where the price can vary drastically between pharmacies, even within a single pharmacy depending upon your healthcare "insurance" provider.
Hell, I've had troubles because I was on a plan with a company, and it turned out that they had zero specialists of the type I needed under that plan in state(and this was Alaska, so traveling to another state is a semi-big deal, generally requiring air travel), but I had found a specialist that said they took my p
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So that makes the argument sound a lot like a fallacious slippery slope. A slippery slope is not a good argument on a basis of "what if" followed by a string other "what if also". It's only valid if one step inevitably leads to the next.
On top of tha
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Yes, the Chinese steal foreign innovations, but they cannot sell copied products on western markets, so it's not a good example.
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While there are also counterfeit products which will be sanctioned if found out in our markets, it's not those that I'm talking about here.
It often went the way that some product researched and developed in the West was manufactured at some point in China because it's cheap to manufacture there. Then the contract and license to manufacture the genuine product on the side of the Chinese might run out, but they get to keep the manufacturing equipment and knowledge of how to do it. Then
IP Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Actions like this make one seriously consider whether products like this should be protected by IP laws in the way that they are -- and whether public funding for research and development should be twinned with a lack of IP protection.
Re:IP Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
So you think a company is going to invest x billions of dollars researching, developing, testing, and even marketing a drug and some other company should be able to just come in and make the same drug for the marginal cost without investing a dime? Who is going to do that? The alternative to IP laws (assuming you still want investment in new things to occur) is total secrecy. How does that improve anything?
Needed (Score:2)
They probably need it the most considering the gross mismanagement.
500,000 doses? that's about enough for 5 days (Score:2)
wrong choice of words (Score:3, Insightful)
US taxpayers paid to develop remdesivir (Score:4, Informative)
And now, after being paid $70 million [citizen.org] to develop remdesivir, Gilead want $3200 for six doses?
Hoarding like this is ultimately self-defeating [theconversation.com], because if the rest of the world is deprived of treatment then they'll just continually reinfect the hoarders anyway.
Note that the UK is doing it too, with dexamethasone [www.gov.uk].
Really? (Score:2)
"The drug, which was trialled in the Ebola epidemic but failed to work as expected, is under patent to Gilead, which means no other company in wealthy countries can make it. "
They don't give a shit, if they need it they'll make it themselves, just like with all the other drugs before.
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Yep. This will probably end up in a dusty shed somewhere next to all those ventilators which it turns out weren't needed after all.
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This will probably end up in a dusty shed somewhere next to all those ventilators which it turns out weren't needed after all.
More likely they'll go to the same place as the mountain of useless Hydroxychloroquin meds.
HCQ is useful (Score:2)
Hopefully it'll end up in a DoD, FDA, or FEMA warehouse somewhere where it can be maintained and pulled out for the next disaster.
Or distributed at lower prices to those with prescriptions.
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You may not realize this, but there's a large continuum between ALL and NOTHING.
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Uh okay. What would have been the Slashdot headline if Trump didn't secure the drugs? Trump gives away life saving drug to Russia or something?
He could have, just, you know, bought as much as he actually needs instead of acting like the people who panic-bought all that toilet paper.
(At least toilet paper doesn't have an expiry date).