Thailand Grants Licenses for Generic AIDS and Heart Drugs

pyro9

Mon Jan 29 09:01:30 -0800 2007

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Naturally, the pharmaceutical companies are incensed about it, but as the article quoted, "We can't just let them die".

Given the many stories of people having to self-ration life saving medications or choose between food or drugs, they have a LONG uphill battle for any sort of public sympathy.

As with most things, you can press people right up to an invisible line. One iota beyond that and you lose everything.

Thailand Grants Licenses for Generic AIDS and Heart Drugs

rubycodez

Mon Jan 29 09:49:28 -0800 2007

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I wonder if the Thai government cares one way or another if a very small percentage of its population flops over dead because of drug pricing, maybe they don't want big banking / big corps to have quite so much power there like they do in most places, like say the U.S.A. where we are totally owned.  

Thailand Grants Licenses for Generic AIDS and Heart Drugs

pyro9

Mon Jan 29 11:19:04 -0800 2007

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You may be right, and who could blame them? Of course concern for keeping people alive reads a lot better in press releases, but both are valid concerns.

Thailand Grants Licenses for - w0h00, email notification working! thanks Bruce

rubycodez

Mon Jan 29 12:25:41 -0800 2007

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the big companies of the world sure don't need to be squeezing the 30% of the people on earth that don't know where next meal is coming from, nor the money lender/movers that get a piece of all action

Thailand Grants Licenses for Generic AIDS and Heart Drugs

Spider

Mon Jan 29 14:40:48 -0800 2007

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Well done Thailand.  Pharmaceutical Companies have been ripping off countries for years.

I thought technocrats were educated?

mcrbids

Mon Jan 29 18:51:43 -0800 2007

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I'm amazed at the number of "Stick it to the man, Thailand!" comments found here! It's just amazing.

Sticking it to the drug companies like this will have lots of unintended consequences. The end result will be the exact opposite of what they intend.

A good example of this in action is France. In an effort to guarantee that everybody has a job, the French govt made it all but impossible to fire somebody. It actually requires negotiation with the govt before layoffs can be done. As a result, any company that could justify it has or is leaving the country. End result? Unemployment is skyrocketing - or did you wonder what all those riots were actually about?

As a result of this Intellectual Property theft, drug companies are going to steer clear of Thailand completely if they can possible manage it. New life-saving drugs will thus become unavailable or very expensive.

Think about it... you are a drug company CEO. You have tens of thousands of people on your payroll, and developing a new drug for sale will take a decade or more, at great expense, with no chance of return unless the drug is proven safe. And even after the drug is approved, if there should be any side effects, the costs can quickly balloon well into the billions.

Risk averse wouldn't even begin to describe you in these circumstances... Are you going to risk developing any kind of relationship with/in a country that's shown a complete disregard for these investments?

It seems to have become popular to complain about Intellectual Property as a concept. Yet few realize how much they depend on the existence of IP law. Even the power of the GPL is based on copyrights. Without the copyright laws in effect, the "share and share alike" concepts of the GPL become unenforcible. It's a shame that so many people are so horribly misguided.

Boo on Thailand. They're cutting off their nose to spite their face, and it's the population at large that will suffer the most.

we have to admit there is a problem, two problems really

zogger

Mon Jan 29 21:45:56 -0800 2007

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There are 6 billion people on the planet, and they all will need healthcare. Fact.
 
 Healthcare is about the fastest rising cost that most people face with any "bill". In a lot of cases, say-the bulk of the planet-it is unaffordable beyond the most basic level.

That's the problem. We can ignore it or not. I say it is a better idea to not make billions of people angry, desperate and annoyed with you. Call me old fashioned, but it just doesn't seem like a smooth move to me.

What you outlined is a problem as well, we can ignore it or not.
I say we don't ignore that either, as it is current reality. Might as well live in the real world. So we'll call this "fact" as well.

Basically, I don't think we can ignore either problem, which will force us-us being humanity in general-to take a hard look at how we can evolve the business of medicine into something that everyone can access and afford. We need to solve both problems at the same time, so this requires a bit more than a normal looking at.

How can we do that, how can we develop then encourage (or force) the rapid evolution needed to address *both* problems?

About the only thing I have seen recently mentioned that approaches both of them at some half way point is to eliminate the normal business model we have now-as you outlined-and go to medical bounties, medical x-prizes, and public cooperative medical research with the "IP Property rights", then that property becoming open.

 The researchers won't have to spend nickle one on marketing, advertising, etc. Just research. We have governments, insurance companies, and every human on the planet who has both a physical and economic stake on good outcomes there-so that is where the money will come from, those three places, and that is where the enthusiasm can come from as well.

I think the major switch will have to be faced by the "investors" who see medicine as strictly a for-profit a business and not a public service-society, with a lot of work, can possibly afford medical costs-but not the customary profits that are sought after above the costs. Salaries yes, billionaires..no. Because that way completely ignores one of the two problems that we can't afford *to* ignore.

I don't have anything better than that.  Ignoring the 3/4ths or more of the planet that needs medical care but has no way possible to pay for it and telling them they will have to pay beyond their GNP for medical care just isn't going to happen, we mght as well continue to address reality and fact, and because of this current impasse, you will see more and more actions like thailand has taken being done by more and more nations.

Inevitable. Predictable.

  And it is because they have no more choices left other than "eminent domain" type seizures, and as negotiations in the market place have broken, almost irreparably, the two sides aren't even close any longer.

  And technically, the rule is there, all these big companies wanted to push the WTO, they got it, signed the papers, the exemptions and rules are there-nations can just do what they need to do to get new medicines or affordable medicines once they get desperate.

Now if the big companies decide to just stop working, well, I seriously doubt the actual eggheads who make their products will want to stop working, they will go where the next best deal is, and that might be research co-ops looking for a medical X prize, or pooling resources to try and sell their IP at a more reasonable cost, etc.  You could very well see several nations who really need some drugs for x,y, disease pooling resources and funding a mututally shared result research effort in x,y,z, and paying a reasonable fee to the researches, good salaries, access to buildings for labs and so on, maybe free housing, whatever it took,  but eliminating the entire normal middle man and bureacracy and investor profit deal. The potential patients-all the humans-are the main investors then, and any profit they get comes in the form of much cheaper and better quality healthcare.

 That could happen easily actually if push comes to shove.  You  get several medium decent nations, say some of the Tigers and brazil and some other south american nations, add in a few african nations, and yes, they could fund some pretty hefty projects, and use a lot of their own techs to boot, and just agree to equally share all the results, with no "investors" beyond their own citizenry and what they make doing other business and taxes going to pay for it.

 Add in some powerhouses like India, who have already indicated they will be doing this at least with some drugs-and you'll start to see the drug businesses get more reasonable on costs, or..they'll just get routed around, due to public necessity.

The bottom line is, this is the tip of the iceberg on healthcare demand and unless the drug companies want to go out (or mostly out) of business they better re-think their current business strategies. Stay in business and make *some* money, or just get bypassed pretty soon and make not much at all? That is what they are facing, and across the bargaing table are billions of people saying "we are desperate and are close to not caring a bit about your profits, listen to us now, we aren't joking about this, or we will ignore you and go about our business without you". That is what is going on.

I honestly don't think all these nations are really worried about manuacturing drugs-they manufacture *everything else now* on the planet. They have a lot of young people finally starting to hit universities in impressive numbers. And so on. Initially they might be behind the 8 ball when it comes to getting the reserach going, but it won't take them too long to come up to speed and just eliminate the cost bottleneck that is currently making advanced medicine only for the most wealthy on the planet (and yes, middle class and above in any modern tech nation means you are very wealthy by global standards and are in the top few percent).

It's a cinch something is going to give soon, just too much pressure for fast change now.

Just like we are seeing with the alternative fuels, the last few years of totally insane profits with the oil companies and a LOT of nations have cried uncle, just given up on high oil prices and now they are going full tilt boogie routing around the problem to wind/solar and biofuels. Heck, almost every day I put up something to that effect. it's happening, routing around the energy economic bottlenecks. They just got tired of waiting for a dozen major energy companies to come up with long term sustainable affordable and cleaner energy. It won't happen totally overnight, but that is the obvious big trend.

They will do the same with the current medical ..well, cartel... high prices as well.

And in the US, with the baby boomers set to retire and becoming by far and away THE  dominant voting bloc and having the most spare time for activism and having the most pressing and immediate need in that subject? double HA! You ARE going to see some profound changes in medicine and costs, one way or the other, but it IS going to change and it won't be "business as normal" as you see it now, that's for dang sure. That isn't just your old tired "handwriting on the wall", that's a message that's a 1000 foot tall triple neon 3-D billboard it's that easy to see, no bifocals needed.

we have to admit there is a problem, two problems really

Charles E Hill

Tue Jan 30 09:14:23 -0800 2007

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One of the big problems is the generic concept of patents.

The same 75 year protection is giving to software, drugs and automobile parts.  The idea being, to give the inventor an exclusive period in which they can develop and profit from their creativity.  It fosters creativity by giving incentive to be creative.  Come up with something new, and it is yours to market for 75 years.  Good luck.

The problem is 75 years is an unrealistic number by today's standards, especially for items like software and drugs.  That number was pulled out of a hat in the pre-industrial age, when getting a product to market and making a profit could take DECADES.  Fine for a new brake system on a car, but 100% useless for software and drugs.

Software moves at an incredible pace, something I'm sure everyone here is aware.  What software, or components, are you using today that you were using 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago?  Imaging if Apple (or Xerox) had patented the WIMP GUI back in 1986, what you'd be using now.  Software patents need to either be eliminated or reduced to something like 5 years with a 1-time renewal of another 5 years as an option.

Drugs are in the same boat.  The diseases they are effective for can become resistant over time.  Look at the problem that S. Africa is having right now with super drug-resistant TB!  What good are TB medications developed 25 - 50 years ago going to be when their patents expire?  Yes, drugs cost a lot to develop.  But many also have an effectiveness life that is less than the patent life.  Non-device medical patents need to be shortened to 10-15 years, with a one time 10-year extension.  Or, we need to have a "compulsory licensing" scheme similar to what is available in certain music arenas.  The best approach may be both: a 15-year exclusivity patent, followed by a 10-year compulsory licensing patent, followed by expiration.

we have to admit there is a problem, two problems really

Ben Hutchings

Tue Jan 30 12:17:06 -0800 2007

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Which country has 75-year terms for patents?! 20 years is the usual term.

we have to admit there is a problem, two problems really

Charles E Hill

Tue Jan 30 12:30:01 -0800 2007

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Whoops!  There I go, mixing up my IP info again!  Thanks.

I thought technocrats were educated?

the womble

Mon Jan 29 21:48:19 -0800 2007

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There are lots of negative consequences to the way things work your way.

A lot of medical research is paid for by governments and charities anyway (see the Welcome Foundation for example).

A lot of pharmaceutical research is originally done at universities and then comemrialised - take a look at a few pharma sector startups - and not necessarilly small companies either.

Big pharma spend a lot of money producing more variants on existing drugs - look at the number of different statins available, for example. They are not that brilliant at inventing completely new drugs, and are becoming less so.

They push unnecessary treatments - like close to 20% of children being given ADHD drugs in some US states (Virginia as one, I think).

With such big commerial interests they push drugs of dubious value and safety.

Their sales forces have a huge influence on doctors (they spend a lot of money, presumeably they get a return on it) and presuade them to use their patented drugs instead of generic alteratives.

They focus research on "blockbuster drugs" - for major, prefereably chronic conditions that can be treated rather than cured. In arpticular they see little profits outside the major markets (The US, Europe and Japan).

Last, but not least, it makes already discovered drugs much more expensive.

I would not mind taking my chances with unintended consequenes, especially given the huge known cost.

I thought technocrats were educated?

the womble

Tue Jan 30 00:17:24 -0800 2007

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Thinking about it I picked a bad example with ADHD: there are other forces involved there as well. I also want to add that if you want evidence of how broken the system you are defending is, take a look at drug company's results: look at research vs marketing spend, reliance on minor improvements of out of patent drugs to give in-patent brands that can be marketed, lack of NCEs (new chemical entities) relative to spend. The look at the extent to which governments subsidise research as well. Huge tax breaks in the UK (you can set off more than you spend!), subsidies research everywhere, the necessity for additional incetives such as orphan drug designations.....