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A million-dollar drug

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Re: A million-dollar drug

#101

Post by ekianjo »

ams6110 wrote: post #29
mabbo wrote: post #24

The point of the patent system is that we are giving inventors a time-limited monopoly on their invention in exchange for them sharing it with the world. We all benefit because we have access to this new invention and soon can make it ourselves, and the inventor has an incentive to promote and sell as much as they can while they own the monopoly. But it's not working here. The patent holder is effectively saying soci…

If a patent holder is not producing the patented thing, and not licensing it to someone else who is, the patent should expire. Kind of like a trademark that is not defended. Seems that would fix the problem?

for drugs you usually patent them about 10 years before you can have them on the market. That would be not very compatible with the current requirements of regulatory bodies.

Re: A million-dollar drug

#102

Post by Farradfahren »

wpietri wrote: post #39
apsec112 wrote: post #9

This seems bizarre to me: Van Deventer says the company never considered lowering the price. "Why would we? Pricing shouldn't be a political decision. It should be a rational decision based on merits and value." If no one will pay $1 million, your revenue is $0. Assuming the drug costs much less than $1 million to make, surely any revenue number is better than $0?

I don't think he understands pricing at all. Market price isn't arrived at via a rational process. It's an inherently social process arrived at by negotiation between producers and consumers. And it's especially weird that he thinks pricing shouldn't be political when his product has a government-granted monopoly and the bulk of its customers will be government-run health-care systems and government-licensed insurers…

So there is no such thing as cornering a market. Its just party-cle physics, all behaving according to some quantum-physics of the codex economitas? This right here, is one of many market failures in all its glory.

Why not be scientific for once and just call it that?

Re: A million-dollar drug

#103

Post by Farradfahren »

mabbo wrote: post #24

The point of the patent system is that we are giving inventors a time-limited monopoly on their invention in exchange for them sharing it with the world. We all benefit because we have access to this new invention and soon can make it ourselves, and the inventor has an incentive to promote and sell as much as they can while they own the monopoly. But it's not working here. The patent holder is effectively saying soci…

Exponentially increase patent holding costs? First year 1000 $, 2000 year $, 3 year 4000 $, and so forth

Re: A million-dollar drug

#104

Post by ekianjo »

belltaco wrote: post #31
lisper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last sentence of the article sums it up pretty well: "If it's not commercially viable to produce a certain therapy, unfortunately, in our Western society, it does not happen." And it is far from clear that this is not as it should be, because it's not just LPLD carriers about whom tear-terking stories can be told. $1M can be deployed in other ways that could potentially save more lives. Instead of "Sorry LPLD car…

>If it's not commercially viable to produce a certain therapy, unfortunately, in our Western society, it does not happen. Are there new and innovative drugs for rare conditions coming from non-Western societies?

Actually close to none. And the socialist/communist countries do way worse in caring for their actual population so the only hope is with the West. Its a miracle to see what we already have now compared to 50 years ago.

Re: A million-dollar drug

#105

Post by yholio »

maxander wrote: post #86
quotemstr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think he understands pricing at all. Market price isn't arrived at via a rational process. It's an inherently social process arrived at by negotiation between producers and consumers. Are you suggesting that prices don't have anything to do with scarcity and are just set arbitrarily by social forces? That doesn't seem quite right.

Well, yes, that’s how supply and demand (supposedly) works. The “correct” price is where the demand, at that price, equals the available supply. If the product is scarce, that can drive up the price, but only as far as demand is willing to follow- there’s no inherent value in being scarce. “Price” is a social thing, so of course it’s determibed by social forces.

To illustrate your point: if I paint an unique painting of myself sitting on the toilet, that's quite a scarce item, there is only one in the world, yet, it's utterly worthless.

Purely social forces somehow came to the (in my opinion, debatable) conclusion that ladies with square faces painted by Picasso are art, while a representation of defecation by me is not.

Re: A million-dollar drug

#106

Post by apo »

Glybera was never sold in North America and was available in Europe for just two years, beginning in 2015

The patent will expire within a few years, setting the stage for generic manufacturers to step in, but the article doesn't mention it.

In the US, patent protection extends for 20 years after the earliest filing date for the application on which the grant is based. There can be adjustments to the term if the grant was delayed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent

The article is fuzzy about the timeline of events, bu has this quote:

The stunning results of the mouse experiments were featured on the cover of the journal Human Gene Therapy in September 2004. The cover image showed how, week by week, the mouse blood changed from milky white to a clear, transparent red, illustrating just how effectively the gene therapy was working.

So it seems like a good first guess to put the patent filing at or before 2004.

If so, then the Glybera patent would expire sometime after 2024. At that point, generic manufacturers can step in to sell their version of the product, assuming regulatory approval.

Re: A million-dollar drug

#107

Post by [deleted] »

microcolonel wrote: post #46
wpietri wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he understands pricing at all. Market price isn't arrived at via a rational process. It's an inherently social process arrived at by negotiation between producers and consumers. And it's especially weird that he thinks pricing shouldn't be political when his product has a government-granted monopoly and the bulk of its customers will be government-run health-care systems and government-licensed insurers…

> Sure, there's a real question of how to pay for treatments for rare diseases. But the millions in development are a sunk cost. To take his ball and bat and stomp off would be disappointing in any circumstances. But when people will die because of it? If people actually cared about treating patients, they would be crowdfunding that treatment rather than trying to fleece the people who invested man-decades of work in…

[deleted]

Re: A million-dollar drug

#108

Post by School-Cotton »

torpfactory wrote: post #32
worldsayshi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company does not make use of a patent they should at least loose their right to it.

Especially for lifesaving medical patents. If the drug isn’t being produced, or the price is too high (I don’t know how this would be defined), governments should be empowered to seize the IP and solicit bids to produce the invention. We move heaven and earth to save lives in natural disasters, why do we move so slowly with certain medical conditions?

Then nobody would ever bother investing in new drug development.

A better model would be for the state to fund this research and have the results be public domain.

Re: A million-dollar drug

#109

Post by howard941 »

panzagl wrote: post #96
derefr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drug didn't cost $100 million to make. It cost $100 million to prove that it works in order to get it approved for sale in Europe . In a world where you could just put a drug on the market (where "the market" is, say, hospitals), the drug would have cost far less, and so the inventor would need to recoup far less. Note that I'm not arguing for complete deregulation of drug manufacturing. Testing for product integ…

So maybe it should be more like the UL model? Let the insurance companies fund the proof of safety/efficacy, but it's not mandatory.

If by UL you mean Underwriters Laboratories in the US or the other US NRTLs, compliance testing costs are borne by manufacturers, not insurance companies.

Re: A million-dollar drug

#110

Post by School-Cotton »

> "Why would we? Pricing shouldn't be a political decision. It should be a rational decision based on merits and values," he said. "Hundreds of millions of investor money has gone into the company, and if there is no return for those investments, there will be no new drugs because nobody's going to do that in the future, right?"

As terrible as it sounds, this logic seems sound to me. If we think having this type of drug is worth the > $100MM it took to develop, then health systems should either fund the $100MM research, or they should let private companies do it and pay them fairly for their work. $1MM for something so expensive to develop with so few possible users doesn't seem crazy to me.

If the $100MM is in fact not worth it, then, well, you get the situation we have now.

I'm sure a lot of people will read this article and think the owners/funders of the drugs are the bad guys. But nobody can be expected to work for free.

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