Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quartersawyer who wrote (48307)	11/1/2005 8:36:31 PM
From: kech	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196875

Fair enough. Glad you are happy as a Roche shareholder. I don't know that much about Roche to be honest. It seems like they were a little unwilling to license their drug to all comers until Schumer twisted their arm. Why do you think that was the case? There of course are a lot of uncertainties that even a novice non-Roche follower would know and all of these have to be worked out for the Schumer seizure of Tamiflu IPR to make sense. First of all, Tamiflu is not a vaccine and requires daily doses to work. True if we are hit by a pandemic tomorrow, every one will want it. But the only real public health solution is really a vaccine for H5N1. There are firms working on that, and vaccines will be more likely to be helpful anyway. Second, unless governments dump billions to precommit to Tamiflu, none of these companies, even if licensed, will commit to major production. This has even been the major problem with the vaccine industry, no one makes money because they have to change it each year, they have to scrap everything that isn't used, and when the government does offer to buy large lots to prevent this, they only offer a very low price. Hence, very few vaccine producers survive, and none survive enough to invest in new technology like mamallian production, instead they still use the old chicken egg production technique which is what caused major shortages last year when an old plant was shut down by FDA. Third, as a recent poster presented, there is a critical ingredient to Tamiflu that is in short supply and can't be expanded thus making massive production pretty improbable. Fourth, as in the article I posted, Roche says the production of Tamiflu is pretty difficult and unlikely to be mastered by generics. All of these have to fall a certain way for this to be a successful public health initiative and for Schumer's initiative to make sense. Maybe some or all of these are why Roche was hesitant to go along in addition to the loss of their control of some critical IPR.