4 ms·

Patents do not create value, they protect value. Clinical benefit -- making sick patients healthier -- creates value You need patents because without patent p

Patents do not create value, they protect value. Clinical benefit -- making sick patients healthier -- creates value You need patents because without patent protection, no one would invest the large sums of money and take on the huge risk to bring drugs to market These days, investors and companies generally only fund development of drugs that provide a significant clinical benefit to really sick patients. This is because they deeply understand that value in pharma is determined by clinical benefit The statement that pharmaceuticals are not sold for therapeutic uses is just wrong.

mirimir 8y ago
> Patents do not create value, they protect value. That's just semantic hand waiving. Patents create value. With no patent, as with generic drugs, price approaches marginal cost of production. With a patent, price is limited only by competition with other therapies. And sometimes by regulatory intervention. > These days, investors and companies generally only fund development of drugs that provide a significant clinical benefit to really sick patients. This is because they deeply understand that value in pharma is determined by clinical benefit That's because "really sick patients" are desperate.
- loeg 8y ago
  > With no patent, as with generic drugs, price approaches marginal cost of production. With a patent, price is limited only by competition with other therapies. Right. But the thing is, bringing a drug to market is extremely expensive. So without patents, there isn't a financial incentive to bring a drug to market. Biotech companies aren't charities. > That's because "really sick patients" are desperate. Not sure what you're driving at. The alternative to offering an extremely expensive patented drug to really sick patients is no drug at all (or whatever the previous standard of care was). Yeah, drugs are expensive until the patent runs out, but the patent does eventually run out. Without this system, we wouldn't have new drugs brought to market by for-profit companies. With this system, sure, new drugs are really expensive the first 17-20 years. But then they're really inexpensive, and exist. In the other timeline, they simply did not exist.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    I'm not arguing against patents. However, I am arguing against patent protection for de minimis structural changes that have no substantial therapeutic benefit. Or bullshit delivery systems. For example, I use testosterone creme. Androgel costs a bloody fortune, because their formulation (basically hair gel) has patent protection. So I use a compounded cream that costs ~90% less. > The alternative to offering an extremely expensive patented drug to really sick patients is no drug at all (or whatever the previous standard of care was). That's not the only alternative. Drug development ought to be publicly funded. As it is, the drug industry tends to leech off publicly-funded research. And drug manufacturers ought to be paid only for the manufacturing.
    - loeg 8y ago
      > However, I am arguing against patent protection for de minimis structural changes that have no substantial therapeutic benefit. Or bullshit delivery systems. Potato, potato. If they don't do the work to get FDA approval, even with the bullshit de minimis change, the alternative isn't a patent-free generic — it's nothing, for any price. > Androgel costs a bloody fortune, because their formulation (basically hair gel) has patent protection. So I use a compounded cream that costs ~90% less. So what is the problem with androgel's patent? How does it make your life worse? If they didn't have the patent, you'd still be using the same previous standard-of-care. > Drug development ought to be publicly funded. Well, good luck with that. > And drug manufacturers ought to be paid only for the manufacturing. Like, at-cost? I think you'd see drug manufacturing die out under that proposed policy.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        > If they don't do the work to get FDA approval, even with the bullshit de minimis change, the alternative isn't a patent-free generic — it's nothing, for any price. No, the alternative is some old generic drug, which is just as effective as the new one. But the manufacturer bribes doctors to prescribe the new one, which has no generic equivalents. > So what is the problem with androgel's patent? How does it make your life worse? Because for years there was no commercial alternative. It was only by chance that I found a compounding pharmacy that sold an old-school version. > Like, at-cost? I think you'd see drug manufacturing die out under that proposed policy. That's how it works for generics. And there are lots of generics.
mirimir 8y ago
> The statement that pharmaceuticals are not sold for therapeutic uses is just wrong. I've seen many thousands of internal documents from pharmaceutical firms. It's ~all about the money.
pmoriarty 8y ago
"You need patents because without patent protection, no one would invest the large sums of money and take on the huge risk to bring drugs to market" Except the government. They already fund virtually all basic research in the US (and the world). I don't understand why they couldn't start funding pharmaceutical R&D.
- aaavl2821 8y ago
  At least in 2017-2018 (the only years I know the data offhand), I don't think any FDA approved drugs were developed by academia. It's hard to tell bc you can't see all the licenses, but it's almost never the case that a drug comes straight from academia. Maybe an assay, or some interesting chemical matter, but almost never a drug Plus 30% or so of NIH money goes to universities for "overhead" and not to research The odds of a promising academic finding becoming a drug are incredibly low. and there is not enough NIH funding to support drug discovery and development I also think that if drug research was publicly funded t would be a nightmare. You'd probably end up with drugs costing more than they do now (in terms of added taxes you'd have to pay to bolster NIH budget) and getting fewer drugs approved. Pharma r&d is actually held to a much higher standard in terms of robustness than academic science. The incentives are just messed up in academia -- people want to publish first and foremost, not make medicines. And you can get crappy / irreproducble science published fairly readily One of the first things pharma companies do when considering licensing academic tech is try to replicate the findings independently. Often they can't At least in pharma, the incentives are to make drugs that get FDA approval, that docs prescribe to patients and that insurance companies pay for. For all that to happen the drugs have to work and work very well. And even with the profit motive as an incentive there is still poor decision making and incentive alignment
  - _Schizotypy 8y ago
    I think the fact that they can't replicate findings should say something about the initial findings themselves
    - aaavl2821 8y ago

mirimir 8y ago

> Patents do not create value, they protect value. That's just semantic hand waiving. Patents create value. With no patent, as with generic drugs, price approaches marginal cost of production. With a patent, price is limited only by competition with other therapies. And sometimes by regulatory intervention. > These days, investors and companies generally only fund development of drugs that provide a significant clinical benefit to really sick patients. This is because they deeply understand that value in pharma is determined by clinical benefit That's because "really sick patients" are desperate.

loeg 8y ago
> With no patent, as with generic drugs, price approaches marginal cost of production. With a patent, price is limited only by competition with other therapies. Right. But the thing is, bringing a drug to market is extremely expensive. So without patents, there isn't a financial incentive to bring a drug to market. Biotech companies aren't charities. > That's because "really sick patients" are desperate. Not sure what you're driving at. The alternative to offering an extremely expensive patented drug to really sick patients is no drug at all (or whatever the previous standard of care was). Yeah, drugs are expensive until the patent runs out, but the patent does eventually run out. Without this system, we wouldn't have new drugs brought to market by for-profit companies. With this system, sure, new drugs are really expensive the first 17-20 years. But then they're really inexpensive, and exist. In the other timeline, they simply did not exist.
- mirimir 8y ago
  I'm not arguing against patents. However, I am arguing against patent protection for de minimis structural changes that have no substantial therapeutic benefit. Or bullshit delivery systems. For example, I use testosterone creme. Androgel costs a bloody fortune, because their formulation (basically hair gel) has patent protection. So I use a compounded cream that costs ~90% less. > The alternative to offering an extremely expensive patented drug to really sick patients is no drug at all (or whatever the previous standard of care was). That's not the only alternative. Drug development ought to be publicly funded. As it is, the drug industry tends to leech off publicly-funded research. And drug manufacturers ought to be paid only for the manufacturing.
  - loeg 8y ago
    > However, I am arguing against patent protection for de minimis structural changes that have no substantial therapeutic benefit. Or bullshit delivery systems. Potato, potato. If they don't do the work to get FDA approval, even with the bullshit de minimis change, the alternative isn't a patent-free generic — it's nothing, for any price. > Androgel costs a bloody fortune, because their formulation (basically hair gel) has patent protection. So I use a compounded cream that costs ~90% less. So what is the problem with androgel's patent? How does it make your life worse? If they didn't have the patent, you'd still be using the same previous standard-of-care. > Drug development ought to be publicly funded. Well, good luck with that. > And drug manufacturers ought to be paid only for the manufacturing. Like, at-cost? I think you'd see drug manufacturing die out under that proposed policy.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      > If they don't do the work to get FDA approval, even with the bullshit de minimis change, the alternative isn't a patent-free generic — it's nothing, for any price. No, the alternative is some old generic drug, which is just as effective as the new one. But the manufacturer bribes doctors to prescribe the new one, which has no generic equivalents. > So what is the problem with androgel's patent? How does it make your life worse? Because for years there was no commercial alternative. It was only by chance that I found a compounding pharmacy that sold an old-school version. > Like, at-cost? I think you'd see drug manufacturing die out under that proposed policy. That's how it works for generics. And there are lots of generics.

mirimir 8y ago

> The statement that pharmaceuticals are not sold for therapeutic uses is just wrong. I've seen many thousands of internal documents from pharmaceutical firms. It's ~all about the money.

pmoriarty 8y ago

"You need patents because without patent protection, no one would invest the large sums of money and take on the huge risk to bring drugs to market" Except the government. They already fund virtually all basic research in the US (and the world). I don't understand why they couldn't start funding pharmaceutical R&D.

aaavl2821 8y ago
At least in 2017-2018 (the only years I know the data offhand), I don't think any FDA approved drugs were developed by academia. It's hard to tell bc you can't see all the licenses, but it's almost never the case that a drug comes straight from academia. Maybe an assay, or some interesting chemical matter, but almost never a drug Plus 30% or so of NIH money goes to universities for "overhead" and not to research The odds of a promising academic finding becoming a drug are incredibly low. and there is not enough NIH funding to support drug discovery and development I also think that if drug research was publicly funded t would be a nightmare. You'd probably end up with drugs costing more than they do now (in terms of added taxes you'd have to pay to bolster NIH budget) and getting fewer drugs approved. Pharma r&d is actually held to a much higher standard in terms of robustness than academic science. The incentives are just messed up in academia -- people want to publish first and foremost, not make medicines. And you can get crappy / irreproducble science published fairly readily One of the first things pharma companies do when considering licensing academic tech is try to replicate the findings independently. Often they can't At least in pharma, the incentives are to make drugs that get FDA approval, that docs prescribe to patients and that insurance companies pay for. For all that to happen the drugs have to work and work very well. And even with the profit motive as an incentive there is still poor decision making and incentive alignment
- _Schizotypy 8y ago
  I think the fact that they can't replicate findings should say something about the initial findings themselves
  - aaavl2821 8y ago