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| Thread: Hedge funder buys rights to drug used by AIDS patients and raises price 5000% |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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elodin
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posted September 23, 2015 12:38 AM |
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As abhorrent as raising the price so extremely is, he bought the right to the drug so it is his to do with as he pleases. Freedom means some will use liberty to be jerks.
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Tsar-Ivor
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Scourge of God
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posted September 23, 2015 12:38 AM |
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Stevie said:
You turning socialist now, Xerox?
Quite the contrary I believe, there's nothing socialist about the desire for market competition/distaste for monopolies.
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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fred79
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posted September 23, 2015 12:47 AM |
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amazing, that people in this thread are ok with this, because "freedom". snowing amazing.
freedom, like any other power, comes with responsibility. or at least, it should. grown ups acting like spoiled children who say "MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE!!!" because they snowing think they should be ALLOWED to, should NEVER be allowed authority of ANY sort, over any other life form, let alone, their resources.
people being ok with this because "freedom" fill me with rage. it is absolutely disgusting human behavior, UNFIT of a species that so often claims to be some great thing; and anyone who is fine with it, should be disgusted with themselves. this kind of behavior from such an "advanced species" is an abomination. NO ONE should EVER be ok with it, for ANY reason.
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OhforfSake
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posted September 23, 2015 12:54 AM |
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You don't find it ironic to call out the freedom argument on IP? 
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elodin
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posted September 23, 2015 12:56 AM |
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I guess it all boils down to wether or not you believe in private property rights. I do not approve of how every person uses his property. But I respect their right to use their property as they see fit.
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Revelation
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fred79
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posted September 23, 2015 12:56 AM |
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@ ohfor: i don't understand what you mean.
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted September 23, 2015 12:59 AM |
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elodin said:
I guess it all boils down to wether or not you believe in private property rights. I do not approve of how every person uses his property. But I respect their right to use their property as they see fit.
so, you'd be ok with someone dumping toxic waste on their property, or allowing it to be dumped? or allowing their property to be drilled for oil, or natural gas? no matter what kind of effect it might have on that area, or how the effect might spread?
i know a lot of people are ok with drilling, but just a heads up; i'm not. i believe that the environment takes precedence over people.
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OhforfSake
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posted September 23, 2015 01:02 AM |
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IP laws prohibits people to copy products and use as they please, even if they've the know how.
That is a limitation on freedom.
Yes the owner can set the price as he please, he's free to do that, that's not the issue. The issue is that it potentially affects a lot of people in a negative way, and even if the solution is simple, the law says it's wrong to help those who need the drugs. We don't have that freedom, and that's why I find it ironic.
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fred79
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posted September 23, 2015 01:06 AM |
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it's designed to benefit companies over the common man or woman, which more and more is. which is why i take extreme issue with people okaying these types of things by doing nothing about it. it'll just get worse and worse, because there is no accoutability. if no one is held accountable, snows and their spoiled-child behavior will run rampant. which it is, because people are snowing ok with it.
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OhforfSake
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posted September 23, 2015 01:10 AM |
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I recall the argument:
If we can't hold some kind of right to our discovery, we won't be able to cover our research investment!
While that may be the case, it really isn't the case here. The new owner had no part in the research and what's more peculiar is that the drug isn't by now old enough that you can't hold IP rights over it anyway.
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xerox
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posted September 23, 2015 01:28 AM |
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Tsar-Ivor said:
Stevie said:
You turning socialist now, Xerox?
Quite the contrary I believe, there's nothing socialist about the desire for market competition/distaste for monopolies.
Exactly. I am consistently supporting free market capitalism. This is not free market capitalism.
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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elodin
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posted September 23, 2015 01:34 AM |
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@fred79
Dumping toxic waste on property would result in runoff onto other property so that is different.
If I am selling a product and you are unable or unwilling to purchase the product at the price I am selling it at that is not my fault.
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fred79
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posted September 23, 2015 02:08 AM |
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@ elodin: if you puchase a product in bulk with the intentions of reselling it to consumers at a hugely inflated price merely to make obscene profit, then you would be essentially exhibiting the behavior of an organized crime syndicate; regardless of the fact that that kind of behavior is rampant in business. just because the behavior is widespread, in no way does that mean that it is ok.
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elodin
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posted September 23, 2015 03:24 AM |
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As I said, I find what he did to be abhorrent. But that does not mean he had no right to do it. Not all things that are immoral should be illegal.
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Fauch
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posted September 23, 2015 03:54 AM |
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elodin said:
I guess it all boils down to wether or not you believe in private property rights. I do not approve of how every person uses his property. But I respect their right to use their property as they see fit.
It's not a problem with private property rights, it is normal that people can own a property. but should you be able to own and have the same rights over a medicine than over your own home?
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted September 23, 2015 04:06 AM |
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elodin said:
As I said, I find what he did to be abhorrent. But that does not mean he had no right to do it. Not all things that are immoral should be illegal.
What's the point of law if it doesn't represent our moral identity as a nation? The law and rights are not perfect, they need to be honed through trial and error, accepting it as perfect or even worse as indomitable is just silly imho.
This man through his actions directly affects the life expectancy of countless people afflicted by AIDS, by virtue of setting the price to unreasonable levels is directly affecting everyday patients' ability to have access to what would be a lifesaving drug. This is well beyond a simple issue of property rights.
There was a similar (far from identical though) issue here in Britain, where there was a sudden boom in the loan shark business and adverts such as "Wonga" and other payday loan companies were advertised who loaned for something like 1000-2500% interest. Ofc you could say it's the everyday person's fault for not reading the small print (checking the interest rate) or for being duped, but it's our fault as a society and nation if we let it persist, so imho the British courts did justice by ruling such unreasonable interest rates as illegal.
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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elodin
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posted September 23, 2015 04:44 AM |
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Fauch said:
It's not a problem with private property rights, it is normal that people can own a property. but should you be able to own and have the same rights over a medicine than over your own home?
Why not? What if I discovered a formula that would cure any disease within 5 minutes. But I declined to make medicine for anyone but my friends. Should the government torture me until I reveal my secrets?
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Corribus
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posted September 23, 2015 05:08 AM |
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Edited by Corribus at 05:17, 23 Sep 2015.
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mvassilev said:
Still doesn't explain why the drug's old owner, GlaxoSmithKline, didn't do it first. Maybe Corribus can shed some light on this.
I am not an authority on the regulatory process for drugs, as my area of interest has been more related to foods. One thing I do know is that to some extent regulation of drugs, in the US at least, seems a lot more complex than for foods, because - unlike foods, which must only be safe - drugs must be shown to be safe AND effective. While at first glance it seems like these should be functionally independent criteria, I have gotten the sense that it sometimes isn't. Interesting and, no doubt, challenging risk-benefit calculations sometimes might have to be made. We can imagine that some effective medications for particularly serious diseases might also carry potentially severe side effects. I seem to recall that there are even some provisions to allow people with terminal illnesses to take experimental or unapproved medicines.
Anyway, it is interesting you bring up colchicine. This is a medication I have some personal familiarity with. Given how long its been around, I was surprised at how expensive it was when I had to purchase it - upwards of 3 or 4 dollars a tablet as I recall, and this is with a tremendously good insurance plan. Looked into it and found out that FDA had granted marketing exclusivity to a company for a period of several years on the formulation I was prescribed. You can read FDA's official policy on it here if you are tremendously interested. Despite being a medicine that has been used for decades, it turns out it has a very low therapeutic index (basically, a measure of how close together the therapeutic dose is to the toxic dose - low indices are bad because the dose at which a drug can help is very close to the dose at which it can harm) and, I guess, it was one of those drugs that was grandfathered into the system before a lot of the modern safety evaluations were done. In fact, as far as I can tell it wasn't even officially approved by FDA. Because it was in widespread use, FDA just chose not to take any enforcement actions.
Based on what I've read on FDA's site and elsewhere, what I gathered has happened is that colchicine was never officially approved in some certain formulations for some certain conditions. A company filed for a New Drug Application and provided necessary safety data, and so FDA awarded the company marketing exclusivity as it would any new drug. Bam, price of the drug skyrockets from several pennies per tablet to several dollars a tablet. The justification has been that by granting market exclusivity, the company takes on the responsibility for acquiring critical information about the safety of a drug that was never adequately evaluated in the first place, and had caused a number of fatalities and other adverse events as a result. Of course, those costs are ultimately put on the shoulders of patients and insurance companies, but this is really no different from any other drug. The only difference here is that it's not really a new drug, which makes it feel unfair to patients who may have been on the drug for a long time and suddenly had to pay 1000 times more for it. Not surprisingly, FDA received some criticism for this position, the suggestion being that these evaluations could have been done more efficiently and with less costs to patients, either by academics or FDA itself.
You can read the documents and decide for yourself. I don't think it's a straightforward issue to solve.
I'm sorry but I do not know what specific aspect of the law or the body of associated regulations FDA's decision was based on. I could probably dredge out my copy of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and try to find out, but... limiting returns on investment. 
Regarding the drug mentioned here - I don't know if it's a similar situation or not... but it certainly sounds like it on the surface, at least to some degree. Difference being, the veneer of benevolence on the part of the pharm company in this case seems to be far more tenuous. I don't know what kind of laws (if any) regulate how much a pharmaceutical company is allowed to charge for medications. Ultimately it's probably a moot point because few people pay directly for medications anyway. They're all negotiated by insurance companies, unless you're uninsured, in which case, tough for you. Still, insurance costs go up, we all pay more, blah blah. This leads us down the road of all the things that are wrong with our healthcare system. Thankfully, the Affordable Care Act will solve all that in due course.
Ha.
Personally - and I've stated this before - while I'm all for free market capitalism and the ability of a company to charge what it wants for a product (and for the consumer to change corporate behavior basically through purchasing decisions), it has to be admitted that the healthcare industry, which includes pharmaceutics, is not like other industries, where consumers have the benefit of shopping around for services before they pay or have the ability to apply natural price regulation through the application of negative market pressure. This makes it difficult to advocate for a system where pharmaceutical companies or hospitals are free to charge as much as they can for products and services. It's not a fair market at all, and it's one of the few where I strongly believe in government price regulation. In the case of pharmaceutics, though, you can't regulate too strongly, because profits do without question motivate innovation. There's a fine line. Thankfully, bizarre cases like this seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
Why didn't GSK raise the price of this drug as Turing Pharmaceuticals did? My purely uneducated guess is that it's just a minor drug in GSK's product line and it wouldn't have been worth the trouble. Pharmaceutical companies are vilified enough already. What would be the point in dealing with a PR nightmare to increase the price of a drug that isn't a huge part of the company's revenue stream?
(My personal opinion and all that.)
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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bloodsucker
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posted September 23, 2015 05:10 AM |
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elodin said:
Should the government torture me until I reveal my secrets?
Short awser: YES!!!
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mvassilev
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posted September 23, 2015 05:35 AM |
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Thanks for the explanation, Corribus.  elodin said:
What if I discovered a formula that would cure any disease within 5 minutes. But I declined to make medicine for anyone but my friends. Should the government torture me until I reveal my secrets?
There are at least two reasons why this isn't analogous. First, the government granting exclusivity isn't like it refusing to torture you, it's it committing to take legal action against anyone else who manufactures your formula. Second, the company in question didn't discover the drug, it's just bringing it into compliance with newer requirements. To make a more similar analogy:
What if there was a formula that would cure any disease within 5 minutes, and people were using it, but it had been approved under older standards. Should the government be able to fine and stop other people who manufacture the drug in return for you bringing it into compliance with newer regulations?
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