Health & Fitness – Indian pharmaceutical companies can continue making low-cost generic drugs, ensuring their flow to patients in the developing world, after a seminal challenge to patent laws in India was rejected Monday.
What's the point of investing to create new drugs just to have your research stolen and produced by someone else?
I do agree, but....
High cost associated with massive advertising, some into 70mil mark per year; sales reps; execs salaries; absurdly expansive company building, executive towers, etc etc etc...
But the worst thing about that 80% - 90% of all drugs are worthless improvement over already good and effective drug: like nexiums, celebrex, liprator, etc etc etc....
None of them has been shown any proven benefit over existing yet government willing to pay full price for them.
And than obsession with finding treatment type drugs that have to be taken for years.
As far as I believe the only point of creating new drugs is to fight deseases. And if some body can provide a mechanism to produce it cheaper, it should be respected and welcomed. At least the person suffering from the desease will recognise this.
Fine. If you want to produce a drug based on someone else's work, then pay the other party's research costs.
The part you missed was that it takes people to actually create the drugs and they aren't providing their labor for free. They could have done something else, like become lawyers and fight people who steal others' research.
For those who disagree, let me know when you're going to work on a strictly volunteer basis and I'll be glad to chat with you about your beliefs on stealing others' work while you work on whatever task I assign you.
Cheers.
I don't think anyone expects anyone to work for free ... I do believe, however, that the high cost of many (not ALL) meds is artificially driven higher and higher in order to pad the pockets of --- no, not the deserving scientists ---but some executive with a swanky title. The researcher needs to be amply compensated. Perhaps just a SMALL part of that could come from the rewarding knowledge he/she has helped humanity. And I say a small part because we all know warm fuzzies don't pay the rent.
HA! About 1 or 2 paragraphs is all you need to read here. Here's what the sneaky weasels are complaining about: The inability to secure a renewed patent for the SAME medicine if they just put it in a "time release" form. Since Novartis says they don't plan to appeal, it appears that even they know what a lousy, sneaky tactic that is. To my way of thinking, they should apply the same rules HERE. Making a minor change like that - or COMBINING two existing drugs - should NOT qualify for a new patent. Let's face it, it ain't new - it's just repackaged.
Right, those 'weasels' were giving Glivec to poor Indians for free and only stopped when India green lighted generic production.
Were they giving anything away for free to middle-class Indians? Assuming they could find any? Or were they just doing their own brand of communism by taking lots of drug money from "wealthy" Indians so they could give drugs away for free to poor Indians? Damn communist drug company. How about instead of that we get the drugs available at a fair price for EVERYONE - then if there are some still too poor to afford them, either the government medicaid type program or some other charity helps out?
99% of patients taking Glivec in India received the drug for free.
Some people have to pay for it, so what, Norvatis claims they are reimbursed for their expenditures? What exactly is a 'fair' price? If a pharma company developed a pill that produced the same results as an a quadruple bypass, then what would be a fair price? However much it cost for the bypass surgery plus/minus money for factors such as convenience and side effects, which would probably be a lot. Some people would screech how can someone charge so much for a pill, well look what it does.
And this isn't a patent extension for Glivec in India. There has never been a patent for Glivec in India, Indian patent laws for pharmaceuticals did not exist when Novartis filed its patent requests around the world.
Which drug company do you work for? As a member of the middle class, I am tired of paying high prices for drugs - just because I CAN - when people who just happen to be in a less advantageous economic circumstance pay nothing. Except to the extent that I pay for it through my tax dollars. THAT'S -NOT- FAIR, that's communism. Or at the very best, socialism. And it's WAY out of balance. This is one place where Wal-Mart is a hero: $4 prescriptions for a lot of drugs. I don't know how they do it, but it has cut MY drug bill to less than half.
There are already drugs that produce the same results as a bypass - sort of. Cholesterol lowering drugs do that - you just have to take them early and often. And no, I don't think anyone would consider it correct to pay $ 20,000 for a pill to avoid bypass surgery. The very idea is absurd. Do you pay someone the same to cut your hair as you would pay to build you a new house? That's an equivalent question.
Anyway, MY objection is drug companies getting an extension on patent protection for no reason other than a different package - which is really all that a time release formulation is. Or a combination drug for that matter. It isn't really a NEW thing. It shouldn't qualify.
Where did you get that patent extension were provided to existing patents for reformulation? Patent extensions were designed to give back pharma inventors time lost due to government mandated processes, such as FDA approval.
Patents cannot be extended for more than five years and if the drug is approved and has 14 or more years of its patent time left, then the patent does not qualify for extension.
And what's with the 'new' requirement for patents? The condition for patentability are novelty, Nonobviousness, and appropriateness for utility or design patent.
Time release drugs might be a no-brainer after it is invented, but someone came up with it and patented it. Talk to the USPTO about getting the patent revoked.
And as for combining two drugs, if the two drugs are being mixed as is, I would agree that doesn't seem to rise to patentability, but if the designers had to reformulate the drug to maintain or improve the efficacy of the combo as compared to taking the drugs individually, then that sounds like patentable product.
If there is no central authority dictating drug companies' give away programs, than it's not socialism, it's capitalism.
And someone cutting my hair and is the same as someone working on my house? How so? I've never heard of anyone living in their hairdo.
The pill is a substitute for surgery, a person cutting my hair is not a substitute for someone working on my house.
And by the way, Ted needs quadruple bypass surgery. Bill has a pill that will clear out Ted's blockages, Ted just needs to take it easy for two days after taking the pill, and there is only 0.1% chance of complications. That'll be $20,000. Ted doesn't want to pay that much for a pill? Fine, have a surgical team crack his sternum and flay his arteries for about the same price. What do you think Ted is really going to pick? Why is it an unfair price?
This is nothing more than thief. Selling someone else's work and investment. I understand the suffering of the sick but the companies that are making these drugs are not doing it for free. They are profiting and getting rich. The US needs to protect patents of US companies. People have a right to disagree but if I told them I would only pay them 1/2 pay after the work was done they would be up in arms.
the problem is that the pharmaceutical market is the most profitable business in the world. That alone is sick, very sick. Most of the meds on the market aren/t there to help people, they are on there for profit. They don't care about long term affects, they hide the info on test patients who have had undesireable effects that would stop most people from buying the meds. All the psychological drugs on the market are absolutely horrible for people. I had no idea how many people in my life are on some sort of "mental health" meds, and lately i'm finding out almost everyone i meet is/or has been on these crap "be happy" drugs. My brother is still recovering from his damn ridilin days.
Anyway i'm rambling ****** all these companies. Meds should cost as much as advil, cough syrup etc. Not $1000's per month on pills that have already pulled in a huge profit over their overhead costs for research. The oil companies are poor compared to these companies.......
I used to do background checks for a living and we worked for several RX companies ... We'd verify past employment and earnings and let me tell you, those earnings were ASTRONOMICAL! Particularly for their sales force ... who were almost ALL under the age of 30, by the way, and pulling in HUGE annual incomes. That was some insight into why all these drugs cost a small fortune. ANd you have ever seen these folks pull up to a clinic? Dressed to the nines and driving big ol' fancy SUVs. ANd usually wanting to see YOUR doctor who has already kept you and your sick kid waiting forever! Ay yi yi. Oh well. NOw I'm rambling!: )
I agree with you regarding the dangerous manipulations we can suffer from the big pharmaceutical Co's but I don't think that a "no-demand no-profit" approach will be the answer to our needs, but a combination of public/private development might.
The problem with the public organizations is that a lot of resources are lost to administrative corruption and established interests.
Protection patent laws should be made fairer, for the sake of human health but also to stimulate continuos research. While too long time of protection will stiffle a company's interest in new developments, not enough revenue will cause the needed resources to be invested in other sectors of the economy leaving laboratories only in colleges and universities.
If pharmaceutical companies continue abusing their ownership of life-saving or life-improving chemicals, they will loose even what is rightfully theirs.
Monopolies of any kind or type and under any disguise are incapable of creating sustanaible benefits for consumers nor, eventually, for investors.
slapalib
The latest info on big pharma is that R&D amounts for about 17% and advertising and admin about 31%. They don't tell you that do they?
17% of what? Don't worry about it, I know.
I was reading Pfizer's 10-K yesterday and they do tell me that, except Pfizer spends just under 15% of their revenue on R&D which comes out to over $7 billion.
And you want to complain about advertising and admin? Do you think these drugs sell themselves? Pharma companies have to compete against one another for sales, so deal with it.
I think separate issues are involved although they are related -- 1. respecting patent rights and intellectual property 2. how the phamr cos are profiteering, how they should act more for people's health with what they have got by not getting so much money from the poor, by not hiding truths etc.
The current issue may or may not be justified, but if one justifies it with all the unfairness and bad things pharm cos do to patients, it seems to say that from now on, it's morally okay to copy meds.
skier07--In my university much R&D on drugs is done at tax payer expense...So is the research done in the big labs that are gov't funded. Pity the POOR pharmaceutical companies who spend all that money on R&D...NOT... Most is spent on TV ads.
How much does the average drug company receive in government subsidies for R&D?
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