We Made New Cancer Drug For Rich White People Not (Ick) Poor Indian People, Pharma Giant CEO Actuall

Kandinsky
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

Sorry, you can't tell someone they made enough money so now you are going to steal their product. It's theft. It's either theirs or it isn't. If it is, this is theft. If it isn't, then every country should just steal their products. Or is it just ok for India to do this, and no one else can? Why do some countries get to steal and some don't?

Your first points are accurate; you can't tell someone they've made enough profit or that it isn't their product any more.

However, there's a wider ethical question that isn't limited to simple property rights. I remember the Heinz Dilemma (ethics of stealing medicine) from university. It describes levels of moral development using the idea of a man seeking medicine to keep his wife alive. He can't afford the medicine and eventually steals it.

Morally, the Indians feels justified in producing medicines that save members of their population. Morally, they'd feel it was wrong to accept suffering and/or death if the obstacle was the profit-margin of a corporate entity.

The reasons why these contexts are described as 'dilemmas' is because they aren't as easy to dictate as you are trying to claim. 'Big Pharma' would have no incentive to produce life-saving medicines if they couldn't reap huge profits. Likewise you wouldn't enjoy watching a loved one suffer or die because you were born in a deprived area and couldn't afford (or access) the medicines.

Yes, and the dilemna isn't about a right or wrong answer, it's about how you answer, not what.

So someone saying stealing is wrong so no he shouldn't do it, would be a different answer than no he shouldn't because if everyone simply stole medical care then the medical system would collapse and then no one would ever get any care.

That's my point.

I applaud the Indian Company for bringing this to the market cheaper.
That is what Free Market Capitalism is about.
Let the consumer decide if they want to buy the Generic form or the one from Bayer.
They find something on the market that can be made cheaper without all the overhead and do it.
Unlike Big Pharma that wants government interference via Patents as well as the top Lobbyist to Government in the USA.


These Big Multinationals do not believe the consumer should have a say nor do they believe in Free Market Capitalism.
There are thousands of generic drugs on the market and yet companies like Bayer still stand. So much for that argument.

daskakik
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

Please don't put words in my mouth and India isn't stealing it.

India admits they are stealing it. They admit there is a patent preventing any generics from being made. They are rationalizing the theft. I put no words in your mouth, it's what you said.

So since India admits they are stealing it, why is it ok for them to do so? What other countries can steal it? Can every country steal it? If not, why not? If every country did steal it, who would make any new drugs of this nature?

You have zero answers for those questions.

OccamsRazor04

daskakik
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

Please don't put words in my mouth and India isn't stealing it.

India admits they are stealing it. They admit there is a patent preventing any generics from being made. They are rationalizing the theft. I put no words in your mouth, it's what you said.

So since India admits they are stealing it, why is it ok for them to do so? What other countries can steal it? Can every country steal it? If not, why not? If every country did steal it, who would make any new drugs of this nature?

You have zero answers for those questions.

People tend to not see beyond immediate need. There's also the problem where people think these big companies have endless resources

I did forget to put the research costs in... my mistake.

Everyone... if you are so bothered by this pressure your govt to fund all drugs research through tax funding. Or pressure all govts to chip into a central fund for drugs research then we won't have these situations.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04

How is it stealing if you are paying royalties on it?

I don't think you have a good grasp on what was actually handed down. Your questions are based on whatever you think is going on. Your right I have zero answers because I don't even understand how you came up with them.

How is India stealing it, if they have laws allowing them to strip the patent. And isn't it a bit hypocritical to say the drug company doesn't need to have moral responsibility but India shouldn't steal. You either think all sides should act ethically or neither

This is the problem when healthcare is for profit, it becomes a matter of being available only to those who can afford it.

For those that say this kind of work needs to be rewarded, sure the people doing the work can't be expected to work for nothing, but what could be more rewarding than knowing you are saving lives. We as a society have our ideas of what is important totally screwed up.

It makes me sad to think that the only reason these drugs might exist is because people are driven by the financial reward they bring.

charles1952
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

Dear VoidHawk,

I'm a little surprised you mentioned Health Care. The things I've been hearing are that the NHS is draining money left and right, hospital conditions are falling, and some patients go for a day or two without being seen by anyone on the staff.

The wind farms are losing money that the taxpayer's keep propping up, meaning higher energy prices.

I'm not sure that socializing an industry lowers it's production costs by enough to make a difference, but it is now under government ownership. We have LOTS of experience of what happens when the government tries to run an industry.

With respect,
Charles1952

Amen brother! My grandfather used to always say "The government can # up a train wreck!"
If people want to "socialize" anything, they need to look at cooperatives and similar non-profits, not the damn governments!
We have many energy coops here in the US - every subscriber/customer is also an investor - profits are shared. Same goes for credit unions. Big corporations and governments absolutely hate coops & will do whatever it takes to squash them as it takes their power away!

Ladies and gentlemen, this argument is already over.

I refer you to the UNAIDS Drug Access Initiative, in which I am unreasonably proud to have played a tiny, tiny part.

Through the DAI, the priniciple of differential drug pricing was established, and relevant exemptions to the WTO rules on intellectual-property-protection obtained, in order that HIV/AIDS sufferers in poor countries like mine should be able to afford retroviral drugs.

The principle having been established for one category of drugs, there is no doubt it will (and no reason why it should not) be extended to other categories too.

As a professional writer, I am very much on the side of intellectual-property protection; but in cases like these simple humanity must trump the principles of property rights and liberal capitalism. Sorry, but that's it, full stop; and shame on those who are still flogging this dead horse.

One year of treatment with Nexavar, used largely in liver and kidney cancer cases, costs $96,000 in the U.S. and $69,000 in India, or 41 times the per capita income; India's Natco Ltd. made it for $177 a year.

I believe that's about all I really had to read, personally. There is company profit, and then there is what our system has warped into demanding. Demands are for more profit than the profit of the 'last' quarter, every future quarter and profit for each of God only knows how many shareholders by price, not product, if necessary and at any cost.

Less than $200 vs. the cost of a middle class home in regions of America? Outside the US....it's far more simple of course. Given those numbers, it's outright living and dying. Having a future...or having none.

It's all based on money and purely on money by profit needing to be SO obscenely far beyond what any normal person might call reasonable, it's coming to just "cull the herd" by economics alone, by design or not.

FyreByrd

ketsuko
This is probably because after spending all the millions/billions it costs to develop the drug, places like India and Australia have laws on the books that will allow them to simply strip a drug's patents and open it immediately to generic production if they deem the finished costs too expensive.

There is no protection of intellectual property at all. So why should the company take its medications to those countries again if they cannot expect any return on their investment and will have their intellectual property pirated and potentially sold out from under them everywhere across the globe by others who will make pure profits off of something they did no work to develop?

It represents a major loss on the balance sheet, a potential total loss.

But I guess if the company goes bankrupt ... then we can just expect no new drugs at all. After all, the generic producers aren't making anything except what they're taking from the big dogs who can afford to put the time and effort into R & D.

Sound business practice is to develop and produce products that can be utilitied and afforded by a wide segment of the population. This is elitist Blankity Blank sucking up more dollars that would have been better spent on safe, effective, easy to administer drugs that would benefit more then a handfull of people.(a hand full in todays population being thousands).

When Mercedes first came out with the airbag (I'm not certain of the company or the details - but this is true) they opened the patent for all car manufacturers to use (not license to use for money) because it was 'the right thing to do'.

Altruism must be rewarded. Sadism must be punished.

The reality is that not a wide segment of the population can use any one cancer drug. Cancers are highly differentiated and only a small segment of cancer patients will generally ever use any one drug. That's why they tend to be so expensive - not because the drug companies are necessarily evil or greedy but because by the time you divide out the enormous costs involved in developing any drug by the potential patient pool and the expected patent protection window and the market place ... well, you don't have a very big pool of expected patients with which to try to realize even a small return.

Then, of course, we can get into the amplifying effects of health insurance on all costs across the board ... but that's another story ... and we can talk about how countries with socialized medicine force companies to sell bulk amounts of medicine at a discount further undercutting any attempts gain a return ... etc.

Btw, when Mercedes came out with the airbag, it was a nice feature and not a main profit driver. Drug companies make money on drugs. It is there reason for being. Now, if Mercedes came up with a way to completely revolutionize the car itself, which is their reason for being, I doubt they would have freely released that to all other car companies.

You're trying to compare the equivalent of a new gel caplet to a new drug. Apples to oranges.

Man invented the idea of hell for these demons who deserve it, I pray it exists.

VoidHawk
Helping the sick should NOT be about profit!
Drug companies should all be brought under state control, that way the greedy shareholders and execs are removed from the cost of production meaning cheaper health care for EVERYONE!

Drug companies are brought under state control. Why do think drugs are so expensive to make in the first place? State regulation and control. Then, we have the total hypocrisy of countries who will then steal the finished product, made expensive by state regulation and control in the first place.

My husband works in animal pharma and works in QC. His job deals directly with the madness imposed by regulation and control imposed by the state, and not just one state by any state a company wishes to sell to.

For one example, France once imposed a regulation that had them trying to strain a substance with a consistency of Jell-O through a filter like a coffee filter ... just because some bureaucrat thought it sounded good and thought the numbers would look pretty. Every new test, every new hoop they jump is a cost in time, money, material, paperwork, man hours, etc. All of that goes into the final cost of the product, and contrary to belief, very little of it is actually practical or does anything to make anyone safer. But it does make bureaucrats feel powerful.

And human pharma is at least 100 times worse.

reply to post by FyreByrd


I'm ok with this.

VoidHawk
Drug companies should all be brought under state control, that way the greedy shareholders and execs are removed from the cost of production meaning cheaper health care for EVERYONE!

Yes ... because the government is so trustworthy and incorrupt .. and because they do such a good job of running everything else that they get their meathooks into .... /sarcasm

FyreByrd
I know my pro-big-business friends will rail about 'research costs' and 'regulations' but this is just sick.

Okay .. here you go ...

Drug companies are in the business of making money. If you take away their ability to make money, then they won't bother with the research and the development of new drugs and treatments. Money is the motivator. Take that away and there won't be any drugs for anyone.

And no, the government taking over won't be any better. In fact, it would be worse. It's far more corrupt then the drug companies. The drug companies have to answer to people and to stock holders. The gov't answers to no one. Not really.

OccamsRazor04

Now what if you spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and the man you gave the water to had a bad reaction and he sued you for another $50 million. Then Africa said we don't care you spent your money, we're taking your technology and not paying you a penny for it. Then the guy down the street took your technology and was selling the water at the same price you did, without paying any of the cost.

You think the next guy wanting to create something is going to waste his money doing it?

Which is a valid question. Why would Bayer develop a drug of limited effectiveness and very limited market in the first place.

Not only evil but stupid.

daskakik

OccamsRazor04
You think the next guy wanting to create something is going to waste his money doing it?

Wow that sounds bad but let's look at some facts:
According to the info presented the R&D for Nexavar was $275 million and Bayer recieved Orphan Drug designation which means that the US taxpayer footed up to 50% of that.

Onyx (co-developer) stated that sales for 2006 totaled $164 million and by 2012 sales were over $1 Billion.

What Natco offers:

Natco Pharma (the Indian company) offers the medication at $177 a month and claims to have a profit margin of around 25%. That is after paying Bayer a 6% royalty.

By the way, there were 700,000 cases of liver cancer diagnosed in 2006. If they had made the drug available at $200/month ($2,400/year) and half of those patients had bought it they would have made almost $50 million (in profit) after recovering their R&D costs. Every year after that would have been gravy.

Sounds a little different than your "what if".

Nicely, nicely done. With real facts and sources. Can I be your friend?

reply to post by FyreByrd


I have no idea where you got your history if the airbag from....but it is soooo wrong.