don't get too excited
don't get too excited
Posted Jun 20, 2014 0:54 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953)In reply to: don't get too excited by paragw
Parent article: US Supreme Court rules against software patents
Posted Jun 22, 2014 20:43 UTC (Sun)
by Seegras (guest, #20463)
[Link] (14 responses)
What??? Which complete moron granted that? It's more than 3000 years old!
http://seegras.discordia.ch/Blog/patents-on-bronze-age-te...
Probably this is just the way of the world to tell me, that ALL patents are rubbish, and the concept of patents itself is just some blatant rent-seeking effort which should have been erased from this planet in the 18th century.
Posted Jun 24, 2014 10:01 UTC (Tue)
by Tjebbe (guest, #34055)
[Link] (13 responses)
They are, and they should.
A few countries have had a some bright moments in history and abolished patents (the Netherlands, for instance, but they later reintroduced them. I can only guess because of international pressure).
Posted Jun 24, 2014 17:11 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Jun 24, 2014 17:16 UTC (Tue)
by niner (subscriber, #26151)
[Link]
Posted Jun 24, 2014 18:17 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (10 responses)
So pharmaceutical propaganda would have you believe ...
I think the evidence is that even there they do more harm than good ...
Cheers,
Posted Jun 24, 2014 19:31 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (9 responses)
Here's an example. This drug ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofosbuvir ) costs about $150 to manufacture. Yet its retail price is about $80000.
You'd think the markup on each bottle of pills is $79850? Wrong, it's only about $20000 - about 30% of price. The rest goes towards financing the expenses incurred during the drug development.
The problem is, it took around 5 billions of dollars to discover and test this drug. And it's only getting worse with new drugs.
So what are your suggestions?
Posted Jun 24, 2014 21:13 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (8 responses)
Stop spending millions on developing minor variations on drugs that are about to go out of patent?
Actually STARTING to spend some money on sorely needed drugs for illnesses that don't affect westerners?
Or reducing the ability of the food manufacturers to sucker/advertise us into eating unhealthy diets (it's looking more and more certain that the low fat industry has got cause and effect the wrong way round - the diet industry is the *cause*, and obesity is the *effect*)?
And you said that things are only getting worse - maybe we should try and reduce this obsession (driven by the American legal industry) that everything "must be safe". LIFE ISN'T SAFE!!!
Do a *real* risk analysis and allow dangerous drugs for serious illnesses to be trialled much more quickly and with far fewer self-defeating safeguards - if I stand a 10% chance of dying from the illness, and a 1% chance of dying from the drug, guess which one I'm going to choose!
And lastly, maybe allow companies to carve out research niches as "protected areas" - if a company does "blue-sky" research into a drug family, then they get exclusive rights for say 10 years after the drug gets FDA (or equivalent) approval. More to the point, other companies aren't allowed to copy-cat research into similar drugs - they have to carve out their own niche.
But at the end of the day, while your figures may be impressive, you still haven't provided any evidence that that research is value for money. All the evidence says that, even measured in $Billions, most pharma research isn't! Okay, sofosbir may be a completely new drug (which would be protected under my "carve out a niche" rules), but equally (the wikipedia article gives no clues) it could just be a minor variant on an existing drug.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 24, 2014 21:26 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (7 responses)
Yet it still took more than 5 billion to develop this drug. It's actually considered cheap these days for new drugs. Lots of companies spend more money without any results.
> Do a *real* risk analysis and allow dangerous drugs for serious illnesses to be trialled much more quickly and with far fewer self-defeating safeguards - if I stand a 10% chance of dying from the illness, and a 1% chance of dying from the drug, guess which one I'm going to choose!
It still doesn't help a lot. Clinical tests are not just a formality to get an approval - a lot of drugs (50% is a commonly cited number) fail during the tests.
> And lastly, maybe allow companies to carve out research niches as "protected areas" - if a company does "blue-sky" research into a drug family, then they get exclusive rights for say 10 years after the drug gets FDA (or equivalent) approval.
> But at the end of the day, while your figures may be impressive, you still haven't provided any evidence that that research is value for money. All the evidence says that, even measured in $Billions, most pharma research isn't!
The amount of money spent on 'useless' research is pretty much zero. Almost all of the R&D is spent on serious diseases. And pharma companies actually spend more on R&D than just about any other industry.
Posted Jun 25, 2014 12:19 UTC (Wed)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 25, 2014 14:29 UTC (Wed)
by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
[Link] (1 responses)
I believe the US-style drugs advertising setup is about getting someone who's on your competitor's drug (or a generic drug) to pester their doctor for a prescription for your New! Innovative! Shiny! (still in patent) drug. Some other countries (my own among them) prohibit pharmaceutical companies from advertising their prescription-only drugs to the general public.
Posted Jun 25, 2014 14:32 UTC (Wed)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link]
Posted Jun 25, 2014 22:07 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (3 responses)
Actually, it isn't. Or rather, the problem is that the protection granted by current patents is pretty poor - if your patent lasts 17 years from publication, and FDA trials take 15 years, then your protected period is 2 years ...
> Can you provide actual examples of pharma research? I do, since we work with drug discovery companies.
Not off the top of my head. But I have a strong personal interest in this field, and all the stuff I've seen says that the majority of Pharma R&D is minor variations on old drugs. Oh - and I get the impression you are in Eastern Europe? The proportion of R&D spent on blue-sky research is much higher in Europe that it is in America, as far as I can make out ...
And if you work with drug discovery companies, does that mean you're being fed a filtered view? Or do you personally actively pick up on anything you come across in the specialist or general media?
One of my favourite examples - aspirin. Which, because it's LONG out of patent, has only recently made a comeback as a drug for treating heart attacks, despite its proven ability to save lives and aid recovery. If your first heart attack kills you, it's not much use, true. But many (30-40%) of heart attacks follow a double-whammy pattern, a minor initial attack and a fatal big one several hours later. Take aspirin after the first attack and the second never happens. And your chances of full recovery from the first attack are much enhanced.
And, following the antics of NICE (the UK drug prescribing authority), it certainly seems as though there is an awful lot of anti-generic pressure in the industry as a whole. NICE has a habit of pushing for generics (not surprisingly) and there is a massive pushback. That said, my wife is chronically ill, and we make a point of requesting specific drugs - that happen to be patented. Not because we believe patented to be better, but generics are subtly different and have been widely reported as causing havoc with the drugs regime. It's change we don't want, not being pro/anti generics. The big problem with generics is that every time you get a new supply of drugs, the specific version can change with all the subtle differences that implies :-(
Cheers,
Posted Jun 25, 2014 22:25 UTC (Wed)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (2 responses)
> Not off the top of my head. But I have a strong personal interest in this field, and all the stuff I've seen says that the majority of Pharma R&D is minor variations on old drugs.
Sometimes companies foray into areas covered with existing drugs and most of the time it ends badly. The most notable example are anti-blood-clotting drugs - there are no new drugs after tens of billions of dollars spent on their development.
>Oh - and I get the impression you are in Eastern Europe?
>The proportion of R&D spent on blue-sky research is much higher in Europe that it is in America, as far as I can make out ...
Posted Jun 26, 2014 10:30 UTC (Thu)
by roc (subscriber, #30627)
[Link]
Hmm. What about rivaroxaban? That's been getting regulatory approval within the last five years; do you not classify that as "new"?
Posted Jun 26, 2014 10:47 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
The only real *new* drug is Levodopa, which was discovered in the 1960s. To the best of my knowledge ALL of the long-term drugs for Parkinsons are variants on it. But Levodopa is now deprecated (because it's out of patent ...)
And on this particular example I have first hand experience :-(
Cheers,
Posted Jun 22, 2014 20:47 UTC (Sun)
by Seegras (guest, #20463)
[Link]
Ah, by the way, [citation needed]
don't get too excited
don't get too excited
don't get too excited
don't get too excited
don't get too excited
Wol
don't get too excited
don't get too excited
Wol
don't get too excited
This drug is completely new. It's also for a disease that is a major cause of liver transplants.
Such regulations are already in place. Critical drugs can be fast-tracked by FDA and approved even if significant side-effects are present.
That is called 'a patent'.
Can you provide actual examples of pharma research? I do, since we work with drug discovery companies.
don't get too excited
don't get too excited
don't get too excited
don't get too excited
> That is called 'a patent'.
Wol
don't get too excited
It's close to 7-10 years. Typical time from the initial drug development to marketing is 10 years. Significantly extending the protection period won't generate much additional income, but it will destroy the generics market.
Totally and insanely incorrect. Most of R&D is done on _totally_ _new_ areas. Tweaking old drugs is simply not profitable for large-scale R&D, because old drugs already work.
Our company is distributed between continents, but our customers are almost all in the US.
Nope. Pharma companies trail only silicon companies in the amount of R&D - universally. Simply because pharma companies have to innovate or die: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/07/08/how_much_...
don't get too excited
> drugs after tens of billions of dollars spent on their development.
don't get too excited
Wol
don't get too excited