Researchers Work Around Hepatitis Drug Patent 298
Several readers let us know about a pair of British researchers who found a workaround to patents covering drugs used to treat hepatitis C. The developers intend to produce a drug cheap enough to supply to people in the poorest parts of the world. The scientists found another way to bind a sugar to interferon, producing a drug they say should be as long-lasting and effective as those sold (at $14,000 for a year's supply) by patent holders Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough. Clinical trials could begin by 2008. The article quotes developer Sunil Shaunak of Imperial College London: "We in academic medicine can either choose to use our ideas to make large sums of money for small numbers of people, or to look outwards to the global community and make affordable medicines."
Thumbs up! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thumbs up! (Score:5, Informative)
Another patented drug to treat Hep C [reuters.com] is on its way as well.
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A) the medicine
B) the process(es) necessary to make the medicine?
Re:Thumbs up! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thumbs up! (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely wrong.
Novel and non-obvious chemical compounds are patentable.
Naturally occurring chemical compounds may be patentable when claimed as purified forms, as pharmaceutically acceptable salts, etc. While you may argue that it is obvious to purify a compound, when the application is drafted correctly, it often discloses or is based on a qualifying disclosure of a particular compound having a particular and previously unknown utility other than its mere existence. That is sufficient to eliminate the "obviousness" of a generic purification argument.
Novel and non-obvious uses of known chemical compounds may also be patentable, as you suggested, but that category represents the minority of chemical patent applications.
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In Soviet Russia, drugs patent you!
Thanks for the assist ;)
Re:Thumbs up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Patent ruling is waste of resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources (Score:4, Insightful)
the so-called "inventor's rights" are in fact ... (Score:5, Informative)
there is no such thing as a "natural right" an inventor has: patent law builds on the premise that a patent is a reward and that many people like to be rewarded.
you are confusing it with copyright law - which grants the author rights because it is his creation - no one else could habe written harry potter, for example. in contrast, sooner or later someone figures out how molecule XYZ can be synthesized - there usually is no "personal creativity" involved.
Re:the so-called "inventor's rights" are in fact . (Score:4, Informative)
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Besides the fact that this is really a philosophical debate now, many of the so-called "natural rights" have drifted too, there is considerable debate about this in the US today. Though Jefferson was clearly influential in advocating the view that IP is mere social contract, this was not the predominant view of the time.
Re:the so-called "inventor's rights" are in fact . (Score:2)
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Harry Potter built on a wealth of previously existing literature about wizards and magic, but that doesn't cheapen it in anyway...
Just because you don't see the artistic
Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources (Score:5, Informative)
The relevant bit:
[1] An earlier bit mentions the oath taker's "parents." These are to be understood to be his mentors. Thus "his children" are the oath taker's peers.
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"To make as much money as one possibly can, in hopes of not falling too far behind the Joneses."
Do you really care what a doctor's motivations were as long as they make a cure or treatment for something as fast as they possibly can?
Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources (Score:5, Insightful)
And where did this inventor get their education from? And their materials? And their food?
It is the responsibility of inventors to share their ideas with all society. As others have pointed out, they have a right to make a fair living off these ideas. But there is a limit to how 'fair' you can get, and making billions of dollars in profits while others are suffering and dying is going way past that point.
Joelt, You need to have a good, long think about yourself. Profit is not the most important thing in the world.
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Perhaps, but the most important thing in the world happens to like guys with big, profits.
Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of it this way: if those companies weren't guaranteed profit in case of discovering something useful, they wouldn't do the research in the first place.
Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Except, of course, they're not guaranteed the profit for the research, they're guaranteed the profit from having a monopoly. Which essentially means their incentive is to get as much profit out of the monopoly as possible (ie, a huge incentive for marketing) while investing the bare minimum necessary to gain another monopoly into research.
And, of course, ignoring the fact that if we didnt grant those monopolies could very well be spending the money now going to the pharmas directly on research instead, thus getting more than five times the R&D done for the same amount of money we spend on medicines today.
Re:Patent ruling is waste of resources (Score:5, Insightful)
Revenue (ttm) : 52.21B
Gross Profit (ttm): 42.77B
Profit Margin (ttm): 24.17%
Contrast that with an industry that doesn't enjoy protection on it's product, say Toyota [yahoo.com] (also picked randomly but assumed to be more or less industry leader at this time)
Revenue (ttm): 189.92B
...and this industry has to make do with only about 19% Gross Margin [yahoo.com].
Gross Profit (ttm): 34.83B
Profit Margin (ttm): 7.00%
So to agree with what you're saying: Pfizer made some 42billion dollars in profits because they have protection on their product; and that profit comes directly from the consumer, and comes directly at the expense of sick people that can't afford the drugs they produce.
'Research' is an expense which decreases profit. Such large profits are simply monopoly protection income that has not been spent as promised: on research.
This clearly shows us that we need to at a minimum reduce the patent term, and more realisticly review the very concept of drug patents.
Anyone who argues that the current patent system is necessary or healthy in the face of these abnormal profits is sick and twisted or stupid or corrupt or maybe all of the above ...
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Assuming the numbers on that page are even true, which given the recent track record of American companies, they probably aren't.
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The same can be said of many things, however this is usually only with something that costs a relatively small amount in the first place so that the percieved price difference is very small for the consumer. This is not the case with generics. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that unless the doctor spe
Nice .... (Score:2)
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IIRC, the breakdown is something like this:
Pharmaceutical:
35% production
35% marketing and administration
15% R&D
15% profit
Cars:
80% production
10% marketing and administration
5% R&D
5% profit
Now, the pharmaceuticals of course claim that they invest a high amount in R&D, with the comparison against other industries. However, wh
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How much money is there in the United States?
How much has been printed? How much is in circulation? How much has been lost? How much is moldering in a sealed mason jar under Uncle Funkenwagner's front porch?
The reason I'm asking is this? To what percentage of currently existing, freely exchanged cash do corporations aspire to? At what percentage of collecti
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Agreed. When pieces of paper and slugs of metal become more important than people it's a sad, sad day.
Nice to see people in developed nations taking an interest in helping those who need help without trying to take them to the cleaners.
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No. I used to think this as well, but this is one of the reasons why scientists are treated poorly despite their contributions. We will develop our ideas in any case, but we are under no obligation to share these ideas with an unworthy society. That we do anyway says quite a bit about ourselves as people, but never assume that we are in any way obliged to slave away so everyone else can use, abuse, and profit off of the fruits of
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That's ridiculous! How can you possibly say that they're pulling their own weight? They earn thousands of times what the average worker does. Surely they don't work thousands of times harder. It is these people exactly that b
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The problem is that many discoveries are also given this treatment, preventing use by others who independently discover the same thing.
wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Unlike physical property, the Constitution does not recognize the existence of intellectual property or any other intrinsic rights to ideas or inventions.
Therefore, patents create that right, they don't recognize it. And they create that right only temporarily, only for a very limited set of ideas, and only if the inventor actually lives up to specific requirements.
In contrast to physical property
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Eivind.
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The other side of the coin is that patents do more than respect an inventor's rights. Say, an inventor makes an invention and keeps it a secret. Another inventor makes the same invention and decides to share it. This seems all well and good, none of the natural "rights" of the inventors have been infringed. Now consider what happens if the first inventor patents his invention and prevents its use: The patent now stops the other inventor sharing his invention and the public from enjoying it. The move trivial
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This is more than a legal issue. It's an ethical issue.
Underlying the ethical issue is a model of how ideas are generated. Depending on the version of that model, you end up at a different ethical position and a different opinion on how the law should be changed.
One model is the genius model. Ther
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And, hey, maybe if he's a super genious he might get as far as figuring out how a pointed stick works.
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Ordinarily I'd say yes but the drug industry has been doing the same thing for years. It's an established business practice to produce an almost identical drug to an existing one, with the same effect and 99.9% structure then market it as new/improved with a corresponding price hike.
Basically these guys have just done cheaply for the end user what the drug co's do expensively. Hoisted by their own petard.
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Big Pharm does this too (Score:5, Interesting)
DO these guys accept Paypal? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Good old USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good old USA (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't aimed at helping the USA, its aimed at helping the rest of the world.
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It seriously shortens the approval process & they (generic drug makers) can usually start the approval process before the 'original' drug's patent protection has worn off.
But after reading TFA, it looks like they've changed the chemical structure of the end result, so they may need to go through years of expensive clinical trials
Medical patents don't spur innovation (Score:2)
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In further news... (Score:3, Funny)
"FUCK!"
Slashdot headlines (Score:5, Funny)
NICE!!!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
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$1,000 per capsule. (Score:2, Troll)
The pills were locked up at the nursing home but he took the only key to the cabinet home with him.
He had to drive up there each day, unlock the cabinet and administer a single pill to his dad under the supervision of the head nurse. Each pill was $1,000 and his dad had to take one every single day of his life or h
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Re:$1,000 per capsule. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Against patents (Score:2)
See? (Score:5, Interesting)
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a couple of things to keep in mind (Score:2)
As I recall, Krugman did the calculation and computed how much tax dollars subsidize the development of patented drugs and how much tax payers end up paying for purchasing the resulting proprietary drugs, and he came to the conclusion tha
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I happen to be sucepta
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They're suggesting making cheap drugs, keeping the patents away from big companies, and having clinical testing subsidised by the countries where they'd be used (which seems fair if they aren't trying to profiteer), as well as developing drugs on obscure illnesses which the west doesn't have (and big business ignores). It's a win/win situ
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I know and understand that companies often act unethical and there is a need to protect people from unethical behaviour. But if the development of medicine could take place in developing countries, the prices could be much lower even if we keep the companies to the same moral standards we like to do in western society.
Many people protest against poor developing countries having to pay high prices for medicine. At the same time arguments like yours keep it that way. It's no
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/12/19/AR2006121901510.html [washingtonpost.com]
A comprehensive look (and really interesting read) is here:
http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.pd f [cptech.org]
Where it goes into great detail about drug development costs.
yes, you are (Score:5, Insightful)
Drug companies spend far more money on advertising than they do on research and development. The next time you watch "Wheel of Fortune", you might realize that the billions of dollars being spent pushing viagra and nexium on everyone are NOT making their way to fundamental advances in science.
2. The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug -- the drug's social utility (this is basic economics).
No matter what the local basement-dwelling Rand-ite may tell you, economics is not a science and is not necessarily the best model for health care. Human welfare is not a widget that can (or should) be bought and sold like a car or an mp3 player.
3. Once the drug companies patents run out, anyone can produce generic medicines cheaply.
And how many millions of people will die in the meantime?
and if they didn't advertise... (Score:2)
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The fact that a drug that a drug is brought to market and can save lives doesn't mean it's available to everyone. It's available to those who can either pay or have insurance. Making a valuation on someone's life because of what they have or don't have in the bank is wrong, in the most literal sense.
Drug companies should be obligated to allow at least one generic per name-brand drug they produce and patent. It may mean a little less advertising and Dr. smoozing money,
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http://www.newstarget.com/010315.html [newstarget.com]
Also, several studies on direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising have
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If advertising the hell out of a product during a drug's short patent life increases the total profit, that means more return for investors, which means the whole industry can
Not at all (Score:2, Insightful)
It was "we in academic medicine", not "we in corporate medicine". Academic research is not motivated by profits, or at least, it should not be.
Secondly, you can't really apply demand-supply analysis on life-saving drugs. When it is a matter of life and death (and there isn't any alternative product), the demand is infinite.
Thirdly, it is quite possible to provide economic (and other) incentives to researchers, even without patents.
You know, there's a reason why doctors take the hippocratic oath [wikipedia.org]. Medic
Re:fallacious (Score:4, Insightful)
Treating is better than curing. (Score:2)
Bingo. You got it in one. The same goes for a lot of other fields as well. Take for example Diabetes-B, which is a controllable disease, as long as you check your bloodsugarlevel 2 times a day, and either use insulin or dieting restriction to adjust for it.
However, to do these tests, you need testsstrips, which are not very cheap
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Re:fallacious (Score:5, Insightful)
To the first: what do you think the ratio of new drug research is to profits? For a major drug company? Conversely, what do you think the ratio of marketing vs profits? Got a clue? No? Feel free to go do a little googling. It is an open secret that drug companies spend almost nothing (compared) on research into new drugs. Even then the research directed is in very, very specific (eg profitable) areas. Hint! It makes a lot more money to market a drug for "Erectile Disfunction" than to actually make a simple, cheap cure for just about any disease you care to name.
To address your second point: The profits made from a drug are a reflection of the profitability of that drug. Nothing more or less. Concrete examples of how _value_ and _profit_ are distinct concepts to follow.
To the third: Once patents run out, drug companies market new, patented drugs. Older, generic drugs are not marketed. Part of the reason this happens is that drug companies advertise directly to doctors (who write the perceptions) and part of the reason is that drug stores make more money selling drugs that cost more. There are a bunch of simple ways to fix most of this in legislation. That, however, is another can of worms.
Examples of point two and the relationship with point three:
Ritalin: Heard of it? Great! How about Dexamphetamine? Not so much? Little known fact! Dexampetamine is a more effective treatment for ADD and ADHD than Ritalin. However it is perscribed less than a fifth as much. Why? Because the patents on Dexamphetamine ran out years ago. It can be made by any drug company and is a commodity item. Profits are very, very low. Ritalin is very profitable because it is a treatment. A patient will need to continue to take Rtalin for years. Possibly forever. Profitability: High! Value: Fuck All! Ritalin does a worse job than a drug that costs less than a third of the price.
Treatment of stomach ulcers: A method of curing stomach ulcers has been around for more than ten years. Thats right, A complete cure! The Australian who discovered the cure was under attack from many major drug companies, who attempted to discredit him and his research. Why? Because anti-acid treatments of stomach ucers are a) Patented and b) something that needs to be taken _forever_. The cure relys on a simple, generic anti-biotic and some mineral treatments. Not patentable, therefore no profits.
If you give a shit about any of these issues, you might be interested in the process of testing and approval that goes on in the USA compared to other countries (Like the UK or Canada) and what the differences mean. You might also be interested in the "Evergreening" of medical patents and the blatant kickbacks that medical companies give Doctors and Pharmacists.
And YES, I am a fucking Pharmacist.
Re:fallacious (Score:4, Interesting)
I suggest you go back freshen up a little before you come preaching here.
And YES, I am a fucking doctor and no I don't have any shares of pharma companies.
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And YES, I am just a norm
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To quote wikipedia:
"Use in Helicobacter pylori eradication
Omeprazole is combined with the antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin (or metronidazole in penicillin-hypersensitive patients) in the one week eradication triple therapy for Helicobacter pylori. Infection by H. pylori is the causative factor in the
not exactly (Score:2)
The reason antibiotics are often given is the association between Helicobacter infection and ulcers. Eradication of this bacteria improves healing but most importantly it reduces your risk of getting ulcers again it the future. But (depending on your population, of course) the prevalence of H. pylori is actually decreasing and more and more ulcers seen today are H. pylori negative (in the two years I worked at a GE clinic,
15% to research, 85% to other stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
In case the grandparent poster is Google impaired - a condition that medical science has yet to find a cure for ;) - I'll be happy to supply some links:
Here are the Financial Highlights from the annual reports of Novartis [novartis.com], Pfizer [pfizer.com] and AstraZeneca [astrazeneca.com]. They all spend around 15% of their revenues on researc
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I'll bite. Because 15% of that 10,000% markup is used for research. The initial research is NOT CHEAP. When someone comes along and 'creates a cheaper version' they are not starting from scratch. They know how the new drug works, and what it does. Then they just have to modify it slightly, or find something else that does the same thing. That's quite a bit easier than starting from scratch and finding something to do the j
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Stomach ulcers have a cure. In some people. Those with helicobacter. And it's not just an antibiotic - it's three drugs (amoxicillin, metronidazole, and a PPI of your choice - let's say omeprazole. You mention a mineral (presume you mean bismuth?). There are a few different treatment regimens available, some with differences. I believe you can even get them as one pill with all the drugs in. Usually a wee
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False. Research can be done under the auspices of a non-profit organization or university, as was done in this case.
2. The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug -- the drug's social utility (this is basic economics).
Clearly false. An effective, cheap vaccine against HIV, say, would be far more valuable than all the Vi
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More valuable by whose standard? How did most of these people get HIV in the first place? Because at some point they valued having sex higher than the perceived risk of getting HIV. Apparently, people value having sex a lot. That's not surprising, evolution would suggest procreation is as important as self preservation. Therefore a drug that helps people having better/more sex may very we
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No, but apparently the incidency among AC's is rather high...
According to the money flow metric you espouse, you are more valuable than about 200 africans. That's wrong. Very very wrong.
That depends on the Africans in question. Some of them are actually richer than me. In any case wrong has nothing to do with it. It's the only way things appear to work. Systems based on fairness have been tried many times but they always turned out even worse than good old capitalism. However great yo
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Do they really? Perhaps drug research should be limited by law to universities and not-for-profit organisations. The people who do the actual research are not the ones that rake in the hundreds of billions each year - that's the stockholders, who by God have enough already.
2. The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug --
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You have perfectly summed up why drug companies spend most of their time (and budgets) on fleecing rich people instead of curing poor people.
While you can make the argument that a specific drug X or Y would still be developed in the absence of profit motives, this is overlooking the fact that reduced profits mean a reduced incentive to produce drugs in the future.
Reduced profits is no
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No. A monopoly give drug companies a large incentive for marketing. And fails to give drug companies appropriate market incentive for efficiency. 80% of pharma revenue is spent on marketing, administration and inefficient production. The R&D is just a necessary evil to obtail the particular monopoly necessary; witness the classic twist-a-molecule game to gain another 20 years monopoly with minimum investment and minimum
I just posted this up above (Score:2)
http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/econ/dimasi2003.p
And I think that you're being modded a troll is complete incorrect. Moderators, just because you don't agree with someone doesn't make them a troll.
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The good folk at The Wellcome Trust [wellcome.ac.uk] might disagree with you there.
And unlike purely commercial entities, and while they do commercialise some of their efforts, they aren't trying to extract as much profit as possible like Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca are.
Bottom line: Drug companies have to make a profit. They have to recover costs
Drug companies DO have to make a profit, but to say that this is to recoup their R&D costs is a littl
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The money has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is usually from profits from drugs. And as I said earlier, profits are an indication of social utility -- how much people value the drug. The more profits, the more people value the drug. The larger the profit, the more good the drug does, and the more incentive to produce that drug (which is why capitalism is pretty cool).
Capitalism has some cool things. This is exactly where it fails.
You are counting people as equals. You equate amount of money invested with people that benefit. That is just not true, specially in a capitalistic society.
If your reasoning had any logic, then casinos would be more valuable for society than hospitals, because there's more money invested into them.
The most money, globally, is overrepresented for rich people problems, like cancer and alzheimer. Globally, the most short term benefit for people a
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1. The software development industry is very different from the drug industry. In particular, look at the costs of bringing something to market. It costs far more to bring a patented drug to market than it does a computer program. So you have higher costs you have to recover.
2. Where does a lot of support for Linux come from? Companies like Red Hat and IBM, who are also competing and want to turn a profit. However, IBM and Red Hat can support diff
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I dunno