5 ms·

Serious question for anyone opposes this. What incentive would pharma companies have to publish their secret formulas if Indian generics simply take the IP and

Serious question for anyone opposes this. What incentive would pharma companies have to publish their secret formulas if Indian generics simply take the IP and drastically undercut prices, preventing the pharma companies from making any profit on the billions they invested in their research? What would compel these pharma companies to invest in any further research?

joesmo 11y ago
I think billions of dollars in profit should be enough, don't you?
- qwerty85344324i 11y ago
  I don't understand what you're implying. A drug requires billions in investment. Why would a company invest billions into a new drug if they can't make that money back?
  - hittaruki 11y ago
    As an example one of the Pharma companies mentioned Novartis is very much profitable. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-28/novartis-third-quarter-profit-climbs-on-new-products http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-28/novartis-t...
    - qwerty85344324i 11y ago
      I am still finding it hard to understand this argument. Why do you think pharma companies like Novartis will continue to be profitable if all of their patents and future patents are ignored? Why would any pharma company invest billions into new research when their IP could just be stolen by an Indian generic and sold for pennies on the dollar?
      - joesmo 11y ago
        Because they're still making billions? But hey, we're not making as many billions as we could. Let's just shut it all down for good. Your reasoning is stupid.
        saint_fiasco 11y ago
        The drugs that make them billions are things like Xanax, Prozac and Viagra. We need to incentivize research into important medicine (ie antibiotics, or something to actually cure AIDS and malaria for good), which is hard because as soon as they develop something actually useful, people refuse to honor their patents.
  - tim333 11y ago
    They can make the billions back from the US, EU etc, not the $1 a day countries.
    - saint_fiasco 11y ago
      Problem is, in the developed countries the more profitable drugs are cosmetics, antidepressants and Viagra. That means research into important drugs like antibiotics, HIV and malaria medicine is underfunded.
  - noselasd 11y ago
    He's implying that they already make their money back, and that billions in investment does pay off, even with the existence of Indian generics - and that will continue to hold true in the future. Ofcourse from the big pharmacy side, the generics represents lost opportunities, they want to make more money.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    > I don't understand what you're implying. A drug requires billions in investment. Why would a company invest billions into a new drug if they can't make that money back? Well pharma companies tend to spend so much money because they are run very inefficiently in the first place. Plus there's the cost of lobbying...
  - joesmo 11y ago
    They make billions regardless of India's patent laws. Why should India let its people die so some company executives somewhere can make a few more billion?
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  I think you are focusing on the successful pharma products. When a company begins an expensive research project, they don't know beforehand if it will be profitable or not. If little-to-medium pharma were compensated generously for the risks they take, they would make more research in new drugs, but because the risk is not compensated, only big pharma can afford the research.
  - joesmo 11y ago
    I don't see how that changes the fact that these companies have profits in the billions, are still not satisfied, and are willing to contribute to the murder of millions to increase their profits. India should have some fucking balls and stand up for its people and repeal these patent laws designed to make a couple of people rich while murdering so many.
    - saint_fiasco 11y ago
      I don't see how enforcing patents is equivalent to murder. It's not like if it weren't for the evil pharma companies, everyone would have access to advanced medicine. Quite the contrary, in fact. We are not talking about software here. Developing medications requires huge investments in developed countries, and no one will develop in the other countries because there is no patent protection in those countries.
drabiega 11y ago
I'm not sure why you need to get hypothetical here. Clearly, they currently have sufficient incentive since they're currently investing in research. They are trying to get a likely small amount of additional money (the people in India who could actually afford their prices) in return for an immense cost human cost.(The people who would lose access because of their prices) Why would anyone not oppose this?
- meric 11y ago
  They don't even need the information published - many of the patented medicines are simply reverse engineered in India.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    You don't need to "reverse engineer" anything. The large majority of the drugs of the market are in the category of small molecules and they are well known and described everywhere. Any organic chemist from any university can draft a synthesis path. the only thing holding the system in place are the patents, not the knowledge.
    - 1971genocide 11y ago
      As someone who did AP chemistry and then went straight into programming. How would I go about learning more of this knowledge ?
      - ekianjo 11y ago
        Go back to get a Master's in Organic Chemistry like everyone else :) You can find books and online resources, but for actual hands-on practice you need to have labs at hand. (Disclosure: I'm an Organic Chemist).
- Thriptic 11y ago
  What happens when more countries decide that they're only willing to pay generic prices. The financial incentive to do the R&D will disappear.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
exelius 11y ago
Very little; which is why pharma research is such a problematic industry. We need to seriously rethink the way we develop drugs: 1. Research does not get funded unless there is a commercial market for the drug. This leads to overfunding of maintenance treatments of chronic diseases like diabetes, because they are widespread and never really go away. Meanwhile, the system does not incentivize investment in things like antibiotics (because the next wide-spectrum antibiotic that gets developed will likely be force-licensed for public health interests). 2. For the vast majority of life-threatening diseases that anyone is likely to catch, the most effective drugs are already off-patent. Unless you can significantly improve outcomes, how can you compete with a generic that works 95% as well as your new drug? 3. The only country currently willing to pay sticker price for pharmaceuticals is the US. Every other country negotiates prices down to a fraction of what the US pays. The idea of a month worth of pills costing $400 is unheard of outside the US. So US citizens are either directly subsidizing the cheap drugs for the rest of the world, or we're getting taken for a ride. 4. The majority of the cost of developing a drug comes in the clinical trial phases. This cost is the same for any drug -- and most of this is marketing budget. Studies are designed to have specific outcomes so they can be listed as bullet points on information sheets given to doctors -- doctors are smart, but they're busy, so if you can do a study saying that "outcomes in high-risk patients were improved by 30% over the leading treatment", the doctors will never look to see what high-risk patients means, whether the study was done correctly, or even what an improved outcome looks like for those patients. Never mind you may have done the study 8 times and this outcome was only observed once. Pharma is broken. Our current pharma industry is geared towards "lifecycle" drugs that alleviate symptoms rather than fixing any underlying problems.

joesmo 11y ago

I think billions of dollars in profit should be enough, don't you?

qwerty85344324i 11y ago
I don't understand what you're implying. A drug requires billions in investment. Why would a company invest billions into a new drug if they can't make that money back?
- hittaruki 11y ago
  As an example one of the Pharma companies mentioned Novartis is very much profitable. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-28/novartis-third-quarter-profit-climbs-on-new-products http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-28/novartis-t...
  - qwerty85344324i 11y ago
    I am still finding it hard to understand this argument. Why do you think pharma companies like Novartis will continue to be profitable if all of their patents and future patents are ignored? Why would any pharma company invest billions into new research when their IP could just be stolen by an Indian generic and sold for pennies on the dollar?
    - joesmo 11y ago
      Because they're still making billions? But hey, we're not making as many billions as we could. Let's just shut it all down for good. Your reasoning is stupid.
      - saint_fiasco 11y ago
        The drugs that make them billions are things like Xanax, Prozac and Viagra. We need to incentivize research into important medicine (ie antibiotics, or something to actually cure AIDS and malaria for good), which is hard because as soon as they develop something actually useful, people refuse to honor their patents.
- tim333 11y ago
  They can make the billions back from the US, EU etc, not the $1 a day countries.
  - saint_fiasco 11y ago
    Problem is, in the developed countries the more profitable drugs are cosmetics, antidepressants and Viagra. That means research into important drugs like antibiotics, HIV and malaria medicine is underfunded.
- noselasd 11y ago
  He's implying that they already make their money back, and that billions in investment does pay off, even with the existence of Indian generics - and that will continue to hold true in the future. Ofcourse from the big pharmacy side, the generics represents lost opportunities, they want to make more money.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  > I don't understand what you're implying. A drug requires billions in investment. Why would a company invest billions into a new drug if they can't make that money back? Well pharma companies tend to spend so much money because they are run very inefficiently in the first place. Plus there's the cost of lobbying...
- joesmo 11y ago
  They make billions regardless of India's patent laws. Why should India let its people die so some company executives somewhere can make a few more billion?
saint_fiasco 11y ago
I think you are focusing on the successful pharma products. When a company begins an expensive research project, they don't know beforehand if it will be profitable or not. If little-to-medium pharma were compensated generously for the risks they take, they would make more research in new drugs, but because the risk is not compensated, only big pharma can afford the research.
- joesmo 11y ago
  I don't see how that changes the fact that these companies have profits in the billions, are still not satisfied, and are willing to contribute to the murder of millions to increase their profits. India should have some fucking balls and stand up for its people and repeal these patent laws designed to make a couple of people rich while murdering so many.
  - saint_fiasco 11y ago
    I don't see how enforcing patents is equivalent to murder. It's not like if it weren't for the evil pharma companies, everyone would have access to advanced medicine. Quite the contrary, in fact. We are not talking about software here. Developing medications requires huge investments in developed countries, and no one will develop in the other countries because there is no patent protection in those countries.

drabiega 11y ago

I'm not sure why you need to get hypothetical here. Clearly, they currently have sufficient incentive since they're currently investing in research. They are trying to get a likely small amount of additional money (the people in India who could actually afford their prices) in return for an immense cost human cost.(The people who would lose access because of their prices) Why would anyone not oppose this?

meric 11y ago
They don't even need the information published - many of the patented medicines are simply reverse engineered in India.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  You don't need to "reverse engineer" anything. The large majority of the drugs of the market are in the category of small molecules and they are well known and described everywhere. Any organic chemist from any university can draft a synthesis path. the only thing holding the system in place are the patents, not the knowledge.
  - 1971genocide 11y ago
    As someone who did AP chemistry and then went straight into programming. How would I go about learning more of this knowledge ?
    - ekianjo 11y ago
      Go back to get a Master's in Organic Chemistry like everyone else :) You can find books and online resources, but for actual hands-on practice you need to have labs at hand. (Disclosure: I'm an Organic Chemist).
Thriptic 11y ago
What happens when more countries decide that they're only willing to pay generic prices. The financial incentive to do the R&D will disappear.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

exelius 11y ago

Very little; which is why pharma research is such a problematic industry. We need to seriously rethink the way we develop drugs: 1. Research does not get funded unless there is a commercial market for the drug. This leads to overfunding of maintenance treatments of chronic diseases like diabetes, because they are widespread and never really go away. Meanwhile, the system does not incentivize investment in things like antibiotics (because the next wide-spectrum antibiotic that gets developed will likely be force-licensed for public health interests). 2. For the vast majority of life-threatening diseases that anyone is likely to catch, the most effective drugs are already off-patent. Unless you can significantly improve outcomes, how can you compete with a generic that works 95% as well as your new drug? 3. The only country currently willing to pay sticker price for pharmaceuticals is the US. Every other country negotiates prices down to a fraction of what the US pays. The idea of a month worth of pills costing $400 is unheard of outside the US. So US citizens are either directly subsidizing the cheap drugs for the rest of the world, or we're getting taken for a ride. 4. The majority of the cost of developing a drug comes in the clinical trial phases. This cost is the same for any drug -- and most of this is marketing budget. Studies are designed to have specific outcomes so they can be listed as bullet points on information sheets given to doctors -- doctors are smart, but they're busy, so if you can do a study saying that "outcomes in high-risk patients were improved by 30% over the leading treatment", the doctors will never look to see what high-risk patients means, whether the study was done correctly, or even what an improved outcome looks like for those patients. Never mind you may have done the study 8 times and this outcome was only observed once. Pharma is broken. Our current pharma industry is geared towards "lifecycle" drugs that alleviate symptoms rather than fixing any underlying problems.