4 ms·

Well said. It is a colossal myth that pharma companies have to charge a lot for patented medications because of development costs (this is the story pushed, of

by logjam 16y ago

Well said. It is a colossal myth that pharma companies have to charge a lot for patented medications because of development costs (this is the story pushed, of course, by Big Pharma themselves). However, they spend most of their money on advertising: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.ht... Instead of innovation, a certain amount of pharma research is devoted near the end of a drug's patent lifetime to merely tweaking that established, well-studied drug a bit to produce a slightly different form. Product extensions with these slight modiﬁcations, generally of dubious benefit, can get at least 3 years of market exclusivity if their developments involve clinical research. Thus, what we get are slow rollouts of extended release, timed release, buffered, etc., etc., formulations of some old drug. Here's a good paper on some of the other strategies used by pharma to extend patent protection: http://nofta-ip.jinbo.net/files/Patent%20term%20extension%20strategies%20in%20the%20pharmaceutical%20industry.pdf http://nofta-ip.jinbo.net/files/Patent%20term%20extension%20... "Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The great majority of “new” drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called “me-too” drugs. The idea is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something very similar to a top-selling drug. For instance, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the newest, Crestor) on the market to lower cholesterol, all variants of the first. As Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, put it, If I’m a manufacturer and I can change one molecule and get another twenty years of patent rights, and convince physicians to prescribe and consumers to demand the next form of Prilosec, or weekly Prozac instead of daily Prozac, just as my patent expires, then why would I be spending money on a lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand-new drugs?" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/jul/15/the-truth-about-the-drug-companies/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/jul/15/the-tru... A formed editor of the New England Journal of Medicine noted, "The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion) [in 2002]. Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself." http://www.wanttoknow.info/healthcoverup http://www.wanttoknow.info/healthcoverup

EGreg 16y ago
Thanks for bringing up those points. I can really only speak from my position in the software industry and say that every time I see a patent suit in the news, it seems to be harming innovation. Like I said, the big companies spend a lot of money on squashing the competition, which already includes branding, advertising, and so forth. Patents are a great weapon that may be marketed as helping the little guy, the startup, protect themselves. But in reality, this is the more likely scenario: startup gets a few patents. Big company sues them for something, and startup runs risk of going bankrupt. Big company had more patents, and more money. When it comes to big companies, they use the patents as weapons against competition and innovation (and why not, that is their fundamental purpose: to enforce a monopoly). Google doesn't want to pay royalties to Apple for the H.265 format or whatever. (That's one example that comes to mind.) If we ignore startups for a moment, the big companies could compete directly instead of invoking government-enforced monopoly rights. You could see how competition on actual BENEFIT to the public would be improved if patents were out of the picture. There would still be advertising budgets. I have a question: We've had patents and big pharma for a long time now, right? Why does all the mainstream medicine in this country have only one answer for almost all diseases: PHARMA DRUGS? And how much better did they get at curing cancer? More people get cancer today than 100 years ago, but how much better did they get at improving people's quality of life with various types of cancers? Meanwhile, do you hear a lot about treatments to ANY major disease that are not monetizable as drugs? Most doctors talking about this are marginalized by the medical community. Can it really be that there are no other types of treatments out there besides pills? And that there aren't any cures to be found? The FDA requires clinical studies to be done before a drug can claim to diagnose, prevent or treat any disease, understandably. But look at us as a society. We need a better way of organizing and verifying medical information about various drugs, research, conditions, etc. It seems to me that the information the public is exposed to is dominated by the pharma companies. They advertise to the public ("ask your doctor about XYZ" -- really, I gotta tell my DOCTOR about it?). They push their products which have been certified by the FDA ... and sometimes, they're wrong and their drugs harm people. Meanwhile, most of the innovation comes from the independents, the university labs. If they published information freely we would all benefit. I'm not sure what could be done to reform the FDA system, though.
- 16y ago

by logjam 16y ago

EGreg 16y ago

Thanks for bringing up those points. I can really only speak from my position in the software industry and say that every time I see a patent suit in the news, it seems to be harming innovation. Like I said, the big companies spend a lot of money on squashing the competition, which already includes branding, advertising, and so forth. Patents are a great weapon that may be marketed as helping the little guy, the startup, protect themselves. But in reality, this is the more likely scenario: startup gets a few patents. Big company sues them for something, and startup runs risk of going bankrupt. Big company had more patents, and more money. When it comes to big companies, they use the patents as weapons against competition and innovation (and why not, that is their fundamental purpose: to enforce a monopoly). Google doesn't want to pay royalties to Apple for the H.265 format or whatever. (That's one example that comes to mind.) If we ignore startups for a moment, the big companies could compete directly instead of invoking government-enforced monopoly rights. You could see how competition on actual BENEFIT to the public would be improved if patents were out of the picture. There would still be advertising budgets. I have a question: We've had patents and big pharma for a long time now, right? Why does all the mainstream medicine in this country have only one answer for almost all diseases: PHARMA DRUGS? And how much better did they get at curing cancer? More people get cancer today than 100 years ago, but how much better did they get at improving people's quality of life with various types of cancers? Meanwhile, do you hear a lot about treatments to ANY major disease that are not monetizable as drugs? Most doctors talking about this are marginalized by the medical community. Can it really be that there are no other types of treatments out there besides pills? And that there aren't any cures to be found? The FDA requires clinical studies to be done before a drug can claim to diagnose, prevent or treat any disease, understandably. But look at us as a society. We need a better way of organizing and verifying medical information about various drugs, research, conditions, etc. It seems to me that the information the public is exposed to is dominated by the pharma companies. They advertise to the public ("ask your doctor about XYZ" -- really, I gotta tell my DOCTOR about it?). They push their products which have been certified by the FDA ... and sometimes, they're wrong and their drugs harm people. Meanwhile, most of the innovation comes from the independents, the university labs. If they published information freely we would all benefit. I'm not sure what could be done to reform the FDA system, though.

16y ago