[geeks] Drug prices [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
>Date: 2008/05/23 Fri AM 12:42:52 EDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: [geeks] Drug prices [was Re:  nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

>> Both Canada and India (perhaps other countries as well), do not pay
>> the going rate for patented drugs.
>
>Patented where?
>
>> Instead, they give the drug companies a choice: either sell it to us
>> at what "we ($country)" think is a fair price, or, we will remove
>> patent protection from the drug, and produce it ourselves, paying you
>> just a pittance for the use of the patent.
>
>Assuming this starts with a nominally valid patent in $country (which
>is implied but not staed), I'm of multiple opinions about it.  (If it
>doesn't, there is no patent protection to remove and thus no basis for
>a scenario such as you sketch at all.)
>
>On the one hand, I'm not fond of any kind of expropriation, which is
>basically what you describe.

Theft is theft, and most countries (I believe - I'm leaving wiggle-room here...) honor each other's patents and intellectual property rights. Of course, there are also countries that don't.

>On the other, I've seldom seen as clear-cut a case of overwhelming
>public interest, at least assuming this is done only very occasionally,
>for the most puoblicly important cases (such as AIDS drugs for Africa).

The best thing I've heard about Pharma's innovating with another's product was the Indian (I think, could be wrong) Pharma that took what was a complex regimine of multiple pills at multiple times a day, reformulated and combined the drugs and made one pill you take at regular intervals (i.e. twice a day you take one pill, not several different ones, each at different intervals). The Major Pharmas couldn't/wouldn't do it, since they'd have to run extensive multi, multi-million dollar drug trials to reprove efficacy, cross-license drugs from several manufacturers, etc. The issue this solved was that many patients in developing countries were having a hard time stickinig to complex drug regimens for AIDs treatments.

Still wrong, but they provided a benefit.
 
>On the third hand, it could hardly happen to a nicer victim.

If you starve a Pharma of cash, you stifle innovation and you reduce the number of new companies that enter the market (why go into Pharma if your work product will be stolen?). Amazingly, many people think new drug compund "fall out of the sky" - it is a very expensive process to develop a new drug, or even get approval for a new use of an existing drug.

Personally, I'd like to see Pharma's be prevented from advertising drugs to consumers here in teh US. That just makes no sense to me - your Doctor wants to prescribe compound A, but you convince him that you want compound B because you like the ad they ran in Time Magazine? WTF?

Lionel