This is absolutely fascinating:
Scientists say they have found a way to invent new medicines and
market them at a fraction of the cost charged by drug companies,
according to a report last night. Sunial Shaunak and his colleague
Steve Brocchini claim that their “ethical pharmaceutical” model could
enable millions in poor countries to be cured of infectious diseases as
well as slashing the NHS drugs bill.
Professor
Shaunak, of Imperial College, said that he and Professor Brocchini,
from the London School of Pharmacy, could alter the molecular structure
of an existing drug and turn it technically into a new medicine which
would no longer be under a 20-year patent to a multinational drug
company.
Professor Shaunak told The Guardian that their research and development costs would be substantially lower than those of multinational companies.
I have absolutely no doubt that this can be done: tweak a moelcule so that it is still effective but sufficiently different that it escapes the previous patent protections. However, they do seem to have missed one rather important point. The expensive part of drug development is the clinical trials. Are we going to side step these so that these copycat drugs do not need to have $400 million or so spent on them?
Interesting if we are, for if we allowed the traditional Big Pharma to do that as well then we’d expect drug prices to come down similarly. If we’re still going to have the same testing, difficult to see how it’s going to be all that much cheaper really.
The Guardian has more, noting that the clinical trials will be done in India. Fair enough, but I still don’t see that this gets us to "a few million pounds" as the cost of development of the drug.
Once the drugs have passed through clinical trials and have been
licensed in India, the same data could be used to obtain a European
licence so that they could be sold to the NHS as well.
Professor
Shaunak says it is time that the monopoly on drug invention and
production by multinational corporations – which charge high prices
because they need to make big profits for their shareholders – was
broken.
I’m afraid he’s rather got his logic bass ackwards there. It isn’t the cost of devising the new compound that costs the billions (actually, some $800 million for a new drug is the industry accepted figure). It’s the cost of proving that it works better than a placebo without too many side effects that costs the dosh. That is, the legal requirements of the FDA. There are literally hundreds of companies that devise drugs and only a few that have the financial resources to get it through the testing process.
Do the testing in India by all means, save the money that way, but why is this "ethical"?
Aha! I’ve found it, the reason for it being ethical:
The trials of the first drug, for hepatitis C, will be cheaper because they are in India and the government will pay
Poor country taxpayers will carry the costs and risks instead of rich world shareholders.
Getting the poor, at the point of a gun (which is how all tax money is ultimately raised) to bear the costs so that we in the rich world can benefit is indeed so much more ethical than the current system, is it not?
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