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Biotech / Medical : Sepracor-Looks very promising -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Swift who wrote (1280)	10/11/1998 1:40:00 AM
From: Robert L. Ray	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10280

They've been thrashing this around on the Yahoo thread today. Hopefully it won't have too much of an effect on SEPR but I'm not crazy about the news. Seems pretty typical though. Big pharma holds on to their cash cows tooth and nail it seems. nt.excite.com Schering-Plough's Legislation to Protect Claritin Will Cost American Allergy Sufferers $250 Million WASHINGT0N, Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Efforts by brand name drug company Schering-Plough to slip special interest legislation into the Omnibus Spending bill now before Congress to protect its Claritin brand antihistamine from competition could cost millions of American allergy sufferers $250 million a year in unnecessary health care costs, according to the National Pharmaceutical Alliance (NPA). Schering-Plough lobbyists are meeting with legislators today on Capitol Hill to convince them to support the legislation, Item #69, that would extend the patent on Claritin. If the company succeeds, consumers will have to wait three more years to benefit from the introduction of less-costly generic versions. Milan Puskar, CEO of Mylan Laboratories, Inc., an NPA member company and the country's largest manufacturer of generic pharmaceuticals, said: "Using our own elected officials to rip-off American consumers to the tune of a quarter billion dollars a year is outrageous. It has to be stopped -- today. You better bet if Schering-Plough gets away with it, every brand name drug company in the country will try the same shifty backroom tactics to protect their products from fair competition." Claritin, the world's best-selling antihistamine, was prescribed over 13 million times in 1996. In 1997, the drug netted Schering-Plough nearly a billion dollars in sales. Generic drugs typically cost half the price of a brand name version and take half the market within two years. A generic version of Claritin could save consumers over $250 million. Schering-Plough has already received two Claritin patent extensions; two years under the Hatch-Waxman Act, and two more years under GATT enabling legislation. This provided Claritin with a total patent life of 21 years -- four more years than Schering-Plough could have expected when developing this drug. NPA Legislative Counsel Tom Long said, "Congress should continue to represent consumer interests over those of a single corporation. They must reject this latest proposal." The National Pharmaceutical Alliance represents over 160 generic pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors of high-quality, less-costly generic pharmaceuticals.