8 ms·

Solvadi's patent is being challenged in India. I hope it is not granted, and generics come on board. A cure would cost about $120 instead of the $64-$80k wil

by ardit33 12y ago

Solvadi's patent is being challenged in India. I hope it is not granted, and generics come on board. A cure would cost about $120 instead of the $64-$80k will cost in the US. If India is smart, they can turn it into well organized medical tourism. Come and see India, get cured, and save $60k.

melling 12y ago
Don't they have a valid patent? Why don't you think it should be granted?
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  Perhaps they're more concerned about human lives than maximizing corporate profits. I realize it's not a popular viewpoint.
  - melling 12y ago
    If they are concerned then they should do the research. It's pretty lame to have someone else spend billions of dollars of their money then simply take their work. Companies wouldn't stay in business with your model, and we wouldn't get new medicines. I would greatly welcome another option where governments or the public funded more medicines then licensed them cheaply.
    - junto 12y ago
      Your point is of course correct within the confines of the current market system. Is the current system moral though? I would argue it isn't. The system is designed to bolster the rich's coffers (countries) and getting rich people healthy, whilst poor countries are unable to pay. These countries can't afford to pay for such investment. The capital imbalance is just huge. Here's my take on this: any drug that is developed by country A has to sell that drug at a rate related to countries B's GDP ratio to A, or allow an open generic license to country B. Thus, should a firm decide to charge $1000 a pill in the US, they have to charge a proportionate and fairer amount to a country like Bangladesh. Whether better access to health services and drugs, many of these third world countries would start to move out of the more that they are currently in. Of course there a huge numbers of variables but I as a share holder would prefer not to see children dying of diseases that could be prevented if it wasn't expensive. Naturally firms like Gilead are going to use market economics to determine the correct price for each country anyway. Something is better than nothing right? Generics are more a solution for long running patents, which I'm personally against when it comes to drug development.
      - melling 12y ago
        You aren't offering any solution to other countries contributing to the development of new medicines. India developed their Mars mission for $74 million dollars. That's a fraction of the US cost. Why can't they develop new medicines for a fraction of the cost? The idea is to increase research at a global level, and have everyone contribute.
        schiffern 12y ago
        >The idea is… Whose idea is that? Who profits from its promotion? Let's not forget that rights to ideas are inventions, not natural rights. >It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. >It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. >It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the actions of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. >Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. >Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices. >Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1813 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....
    - belorn 12y ago
      You mean like the US$26.4 billion of tax money the US government is spending on medical research per year? Imagine a world where companies only stood for the cost of funding research. No more 26.4 billions per year. No more tax funded universities for medical research. No more donations or foundations that give grants. The result would be that no one would get any new medicines and the medical industry would loudly cry for government intervention. And that is with patents, a government granted monopoly. A way to "farm taxes", as it has been described historically.
  - stefantalpalaru 12y ago
    Of course it's not popular. Health is a privilege of the wealthy, not a right for lazy peasants not yet enlightened by Ayn Rand. /s
refurb 12y ago
The patent is not being challenged in India. The company (Gilead) already entered into an agreement with a number of India drug companies to provide Sovaldi for $900 per treatment (vs. the $84,000 in the US).

by ardit33 12y ago

melling 12y ago

Don't they have a valid patent? Why don't you think it should be granted?

PhasmaFelis 12y ago
Perhaps they're more concerned about human lives than maximizing corporate profits. I realize it's not a popular viewpoint.
- melling 12y ago
  If they are concerned then they should do the research. It's pretty lame to have someone else spend billions of dollars of their money then simply take their work. Companies wouldn't stay in business with your model, and we wouldn't get new medicines. I would greatly welcome another option where governments or the public funded more medicines then licensed them cheaply.
  - junto 12y ago
    Your point is of course correct within the confines of the current market system. Is the current system moral though? I would argue it isn't. The system is designed to bolster the rich's coffers (countries) and getting rich people healthy, whilst poor countries are unable to pay. These countries can't afford to pay for such investment. The capital imbalance is just huge. Here's my take on this: any drug that is developed by country A has to sell that drug at a rate related to countries B's GDP ratio to A, or allow an open generic license to country B. Thus, should a firm decide to charge $1000 a pill in the US, they have to charge a proportionate and fairer amount to a country like Bangladesh. Whether better access to health services and drugs, many of these third world countries would start to move out of the more that they are currently in. Of course there a huge numbers of variables but I as a share holder would prefer not to see children dying of diseases that could be prevented if it wasn't expensive. Naturally firms like Gilead are going to use market economics to determine the correct price for each country anyway. Something is better than nothing right? Generics are more a solution for long running patents, which I'm personally against when it comes to drug development.
    - melling 12y ago
      You aren't offering any solution to other countries contributing to the development of new medicines. India developed their Mars mission for $74 million dollars. That's a fraction of the US cost. Why can't they develop new medicines for a fraction of the cost? The idea is to increase research at a global level, and have everyone contribute.
      - schiffern 12y ago
        >The idea is… Whose idea is that? Who profits from its promotion? Let's not forget that rights to ideas are inventions, not natural rights. >It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. >It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. >It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the actions of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. >Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. >Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices. >Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1813 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....
  - belorn 12y ago
    You mean like the US$26.4 billion of tax money the US government is spending on medical research per year? Imagine a world where companies only stood for the cost of funding research. No more 26.4 billions per year. No more tax funded universities for medical research. No more donations or foundations that give grants. The result would be that no one would get any new medicines and the medical industry would loudly cry for government intervention. And that is with patents, a government granted monopoly. A way to "farm taxes", as it has been described historically.
- stefantalpalaru 12y ago
  Of course it's not popular. Health is a privilege of the wealthy, not a right for lazy peasants not yet enlightened by Ayn Rand. /s

refurb 12y ago

The patent is not being challenged in India. The company (Gilead) already entered into an agreement with a number of India drug companies to provide Sovaldi for $900 per treatment (vs. the $84,000 in the US).