Big pharma's bad karma

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Big pharma's bad karma

The drug giants will protest at being undercut by cheap medicines made

in the developing world, but it's time they faced some competition.

Boseley January 2, 2007

Is it finally time to feel some sympathy for the drug companies that

take so much flak?

Suddenly, there is a potential threat to their livelihoods. Two

enterprising academic researchers in London have found a way, they

believe, to reinvent blockbuster medicines and get them on the market

in poor countries for a fraction of the high prices they now command.

Professors Sunil Shaunak of Imperial College and Steve Brocchini from

the London School of Pharmacy have developed a model they call

" ethical pharmaceuticals " and hope to have a version of a new

hepatitis C drug available in India within a few years. Instead of

£7,000 a course, it will cost perhaps a quarter of the price.

This is technically a new drug, because the molecular structure will

be different, but it is, if you like, a variation or rearrangement of

Roche and Schering Plough's drug, called pegylated interferon. And it

has to be said that if scientists employed by the multinationals had

not had the first big idea, then professors Shaunak and Brocchini's

version would not be off the starting blocks.

But as it is a new drug, the patent taken out by Roche and Schering

Plough to protect their investment does not apply. Imperial College

has instructed lawyers employed most of the time by big pharma to take

out a patent of its own on the new version - not to make a profit but

to guard against anybody trying to block development of the drug. The

rest of the work - the clinical trials and the manufacturing - will

now be done cheaply in India. The Indian government will pay for the

trials, because it will save lives and money if its young workers can

be cured of hepatitis C.

The attraction of the ethical pharmaceutical model is clear - cheap

drugs to save the lives of people who would otherwise die. But if it's

a success, the multinational drug companies will soon put up a howl of

" Unfair! " - because there will be nothing to stop these cheap drugs,

once licensed, being sold to the rich markets of Europe and the US.

Patents, argue the drug giants, are their lifeblood. They have to keep

the prices of their drugs high as long as possible - at least in the

rich countries - in order to recoup the vast costs of inventing and

developing new medicines. Without their cutting-edge research, we

won't have breakthroughs in cancer or heart disease which allow us to

live longer, happier lives.

But does it really cost $800m to bring an innovative new drug to

market, as the companies insist? That's a fraught issue. Critics argue

that this hefty price tag not only includes losses on drugs that don't

make it, but also - and more questionably - the costs of marketing and

advertising, which, these days, are higher than the spend on research

and development.

So the real issue here is whether the multinationals can survive the

arrival of a new model of drugmaking, which cuts costs to the bone.

And the answer is that of course they can. They have had a very

lucrative monopoly for a very long time, underpinned by the premise

that they are doing good for humanity. Well, they are - but only a

section of humanity - their shareholders and patients in the affluent

world.

It's about time they had competition. And if the cheap drugs begin to

be bought by the NHS, then there is another solution for the

multinationals - why don't they sell their own drugs at one price in

the west, and a far lower price in the developing world. Under

pressure, they are now doing that for HIV/Aids. It's time they got

moving on other diseases, too.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sarah_boseley/2007/01/a_bitter_pill_for_the_\

drug_com.html