Showing posts with label patients. Show all posts
Showing posts with label patients. Show all posts

Saturday, July 22, 2023

How a Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising H.I.V. Therapy; The New York Times, July 22, 2023

Rebecca Robbins and How a Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising H.I.V. Therapy

"Gilead, one of the world’s largest drugmakers, appeared to be embracing a well-worn industry tactic: gaming the U.S. patent system to protect lucrative monopolies on best-selling drugs...

Gilead ended up introducing a version of the new treatment in 2015, nearly a decade after it might have become available if the company had not paused development in 2004. Its patents now extend until at least 2031.

The delayed release of the new treatment is now the subject of state and federal lawsuits in which some 26,000 patients who took Gilead’s older H.I.V. drugs claim that the company unnecessarily exposed them to kidney and bone problems."

Thursday, January 12, 2017

'Could You Patent The Sun?'; New York Times, January 2017

Video, New York Times; 'Could You Patent The Sun?'

"Decades after Dr. Jonas Salk opposed patenting the polio vaccine, the pharmaceutical industry has changed. What does that mean for the development of innovative drugs and for people whose lives depend on them?"

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Patent rights key to ensuring access to medication; Trib Live, 10/24/16

Robert A. Freeman, Trib Live; Patent rights key to ensuring access to medication:
" A United Nations panel recently released disastrous policy recommendations designed to increase access to medicines in developing countries. The panel ignored obvious solutions.
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon originally tasked the UN High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines with remedying the “policy incoherence” between intellectual property rights and drug access. The panel predictably — and wrongly — viewed IP protections as a barrier to access rather than a bridge to medical innovation.
Undermining IP rights will not help patients in developing countries access medicines.
A 2016 Foreign Affairs study sought to determine whether strong patent protections increase the prices of drugs to developing countries. It found that patents were not key drivers of higher expenditures."

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

U.S. lawmakers demand investigation of $100 price hike of lifesaving EpiPens; Washington Post, 8/23/16

Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post; U.S. lawmakers demand investigation of $100 price hike of lifesaving EpiPens:
"The medication itself isn’t expensive. Analysts calculate that the dosage contained in a single pen is worth about $1. It’s the company’s proprietary pen injector that makes up the bulk of the cost...
A profile in Fortune in 2015 described her rise in colorful terms:
Bresch, a 46-year-old who’s spent more than half her life at Mylan, has steered the company’s transformation from a quirky outfit run out of a West Virginia trailer to a global operator with 30,000 employees in 145 countries. Born into politics—her father, Joe Manchin, is a longtime West Virginia Democratic stalwart who’s now a U.S. senator—Bresch has mastered the regulatory world. Since becoming CEO in 2012, she’s overseen a major revenue increase; Mylan projects sales of up to $10.1 billion this year, up from $6.1 billion in 2011…
Under Bresch’s leadership, Mylan has also stumbled through a series of ethically messy mishaps and public relations gaffes. Mylan’s inversion took place just as uproar over the tactic reached a fever pitch on Capitol Hill. (Among the politicians who denounced the move was Bresch’s own father, though he later changed his mind.) Critics have called out the company for unusually high executive pay packages, questionable use of company jets, and murky relationships with board members. Then there’s “the Heather Bresch situation,” as she herself calls it, a scandal surrounding her executive MBA credentials—when you Google her name, the episode still ranks even higher than her official Mylan bio."

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Making the Most of Clinical Trial Data; New York Times, 4/12/16

Editorial Board, New York Times; Making the Most of Clinical Trial Data:
"Some researchers may oppose sharing data they have worked hard to gather, or worry that others will analyze it incorrectly. Creating opportunities for collaboration on subsequent analysis may help alleviate these concerns.
Of course, any data sharing must take patients’ privacy into account; patients must be informed before joining a clinical trial that their data may be shared and researchers must ensure that the data cannot be used to identify individuals.
By making data available and supporting analysis, foundations, research institutions and drug companies can increase the benefit of clinical trials and pave the way for new findings that could help patients."