India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
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Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#2The world needs more people like him: in a position of power with the guts to stick it to companies who put money before humanitarianism.
Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#3The world needs more people like him: in a position of power with the guts to stick it to companies who put money before humanitarianism.
I would also give credit to Indian patent laws that allow people like him to shake things up.
"In 1972, India made only the process for making drugs patentable, not the drugs themselves."
Compare this to the US where I believe you can patent the active ingredients of a drug, allowing pharmaceuticals to charge more for lifesaving medicine for a longer period of time.
Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#4The world needs more people like him: in a position of power with the guts to stick it to companies who put money before humanitarianism.
I would also give credit to Indian patent laws that allow people like him to shake things up. "In 1972, India made only the process for making drugs patentable, not the drugs themselves." Compare this to the US where I believe you can patent the active ingredients of a drug, allowing pharmaceuticals to charge more for lifesaving medicine for a longer period of time.
Wow, that's a really smart policy on several levels. Besides not stifling competition regarding individual drugs, it encourages companies to develop new methods of synthesis, which has potential side benefits like making the market less fragile against shortages of raw ingredients.
Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#5The world needs more people like him: in a position of power with the guts to stick it to companies who put money before humanitarianism.
The problem is that if these drugs end up entering the grey market in the developed world, it disincentives investment in the next generation of drugs.
Huge amounts of money have to be raised to make a new drug. The cost of bringing a new drug to market is typically $800m-$1.2bn (i.e more than exit value of Instagram or Yammer is required just to get to launch).
With treatments for viruses it gets even more problematic, in developing countries where regulations and medical practices are lax, a large number of people taking drugs in an uncontrolled manner can allow viruses to mutate making the drugs ineffective for everyone.
The issue isn't as simple as good vs evil as the article makes out. There are complex ethical, economical and medical issues here and this article completely ignores that.
Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#6Why is Cipla able to produce the drug at a fifth the price? Can someone please explain how Western companies price their drugs? How much do they send on R&D, marketing and all that? I mean it doesn't really make them look good does it?
P.S. Being from Africa I can testify to how much of a difference Cipla's 1dollar a day AIDS drugs make a huge difference!! Here in Kenya medication is given free of charge under government and NGO subsidies. AIDS is no longer a death sentence if you're poor.
Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#7Why is Cipla able to produce the drug at a fifth the price? Can someone please explain how Western companies price their drugs? How much do they send on R&D, marketing and all that? I mean it doesn't really make them look good does it? P.S. Being from Africa I can testify to how much of a difference Cipla's 1dollar a day AIDS drugs make a huge difference!! Here in Kenya medication is given free of charge under govern…
They don't do much R&D. Most of their drugs are copies of drugs that have been developed in western countries. The drugs are just reverse engineered and reproduced. This is pretty legal under Indian patent law and hence carries on, while Cipla, makes massive amounts of money by being just a drug manufacturer.
They do save lives though :P
Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would also give credit to Indian patent laws that allow people like him to shake things up. "In 1972, India made only the process for making drugs patentable, not the drugs themselves." Compare this to the US where I believe you can patent the active ingredients of a drug, allowing pharmaceuticals to charge more for lifesaving medicine for a longer period of time.
Wow, that's a really smart policy on several levels. Besides not stifling competition regarding individual drugs, it encourages companies to develop new methods of synthesis, which has potential side benefits like making the market less fragile against shortages of raw ingredients.
It also sets the value of discovering new drugs at $0. What's smart about that?
Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#9The world needs more people like him: in a position of power with the guts to stick it to companies who put money before humanitarianism.
The problem is that if these drugs end up entering the grey market in the developed world, it disincentives investment in the next generation of drugs. Huge amounts of money have to be raised to make a new drug. The cost of bringing a new drug to market is typically $800m-$1.2bn (i.e more than exit value of Instagram or Yammer is required just to get to launch). With treatments for viruses it gets even more problemat…
Whatever the complexities of the system, the bottomline is that for-profit corporations should not be allowed to milk medical "consumers" the way they are allowed in the US. If the US can bail out the banksters with trillions of dollars (yes, the Federal Reserve printed trillions and gave it to corporations, not just American banksters and corporations but to corporate buddies all over the world), why must an American patient pay 10-100 times the price charged by the same company in Mexico? That for a medicine that is more than a decade old?!
The US government (read taxpayers) paid milions to GM in bailout money in the last week of September 2008, GM opened a new plant in St. Petersburg, Russia in the first week of October 2008.
How is it all not as simple as good vs evil? Could the trillions of dollars of taxpayer bailout money not be spent on providing healthcare to all Americans and their generations to come?
When they fail we all need to chip in, when they succeed (say their drug is successful) we all have to pay for their profits.
Anyone remember the millions of dollars Rumsfeld made over the bird flu scam? Remember Tamiflu? Bird flu killed a fraction of the number of people routinely killed by common cold and malaria around the world but the UN rushed to declare it a pandemic and that translated into billions of Dollars of purchases of medication from governments around the world. The medication did not even provide the defense it claimed to provide any way.
Re: India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, that's a really smart policy on several levels. Besides not stifling competition regarding individual drugs, it encourages companies to develop new methods of synthesis, which has potential side benefits like making the market less fragile against shortages of raw ingredients.
It also sets the value of discovering new drugs at $0. What's smart about that?
Really, you think the value of having a monopoly on the only known process for making a drug and being first to market with that drug is $0?