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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (24204)	8/23/2001 12:20:17 AM
From: Win Smith	Respond to of 82486

A background article on this topic, from half a year ago. Look at Brazil nytimes.com Patent laws are malleable. Patients are educable. Drug companies are vincible. The world's AIDS crisis is solvable.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (24204)	8/24/2001 2:02:49 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I'm back, but have only moments to post since I'm way behind. A few very quick responses. Roche has to say this will have minimal impact on them, since if they said it would hurt their earnings their shareholders would have every right to excoriate them for not contesting it legally, or taking some other definitive action. While drug prices are high to cover development cost, that's really an accounting and profit issue. Those R&D costs are gone, are sunk costs. What they're really doing is raising money to create the next generation of drugs. So sure, the drug companies could sell every drug at the cost to manufacture it plus a modest profit. But then they would have to close their R&D departments. And no future drugs, no future miracle cures, the next AIDS would run its course with no drugs around to stop it. By paying high drug costs, IMO, we are not so much paying for the past R&D, though that's the way the beancounters may calculate it; rather, we're making sure that when we get sick there will be the best chance of good drugs to get us well. For example, I am praying that they come with an Alzheimer's drug that works before I get the disease. I'm willing to pay the drug companies, through their present drug pricing, to make that possible. You may be more concerned about other illnesses, but each one of us wants those drugs to be there and available and ready for us when we get sick. And that requires high pricing on the present drugs to pay for that R&D. Sure the government pays some through our tax dollars, but by no means all. Brazil's program is wonderful. I admire them for it. But let's keep in mind that it's ONLY possible because our parents paid for the development of the drugs Brazil is relying on by paying higher prices for THEIR drugs. And if the Brazilian principle catches on (and South Africa is also threatening the same thing), and a lot of countries refuse to pay the prices for these drugs, and so reduce the money available for R&D, there will be no drugs for Brazil or those other countries to do the same kind of program when the next scourge comes around. We have a specific example of the consequences of lowering drug prices too low in the flu vaccine issue. One of the major suppliers of flu vaccines dropped out of the market because the price the government would pay for all the shots it was giving and the reimbursements insurance companies were offering were too low. So they dropped out of making the drug. The result is that last year there was not enough flu vaccine to go around, and people got the flu who might not otherwise have had it. The same scenario is threatening for this year. Now, except for certain at risk groups, flu is an inconvenience, not a life-threatening illness. But the same scenario could be true of far more serious illinesses. You mentioned TB. I don't know the TB situation in terms of vaccines, drug treatments, development of new drugs, etc. But I am quite sure that if there is profit to be made in making and finding drugs to fight TB, the drug companies will go for it. But if governments are unwilling to pay drug prices to support that search, the drug companies won't. It's much less simplistic than this, of course. But in broad outline, this is the way I see it, and what I see as the problem with the Brazilian approach. And I haven't even mentioned the problem that when a country has once decided that they don't need to adhere to international principles of intellectual property protection, the next step, whatever it may be -- software, music, whatever -- becomes very much easier. The only solution that I can come up with would be for the solvent governments of the world to compensate the company for their costs plus a reasonable ROI, take over the patent, and get the stuff to as many people as possible as fast as possible. Socialist, I know, but what else could a principled person do? Problem is, the search for new drugs keeps getting more and more expensive. So just paying for the past costs wouldn't, in many cases, provide enough money to create the next generation of drugs.