In article ,
Dave wrote:

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 10:03:32 +1100, Peter Wiley
said:

Completely simplistic. Explain why Canadian (or Aussie or anyone else
with proper manuf. stds) manufacturers simply wouldn't ramp up
production. We have a similar scheme to the Canucks and the US drug
companies hate it. Tough.

There's this thing called a patent covering the most recently developed
drugs. If a Canadian manufacturer isn't licensed, he can't produce the drug.

Well, duh! And there are a huge number of drugs out of patent which are
produced in places other than the USA. Are these affected too? Not to
mention trivial patents on delivery mechanism etc to extend the life of
the basic patent and exclude competition - 'evergreening' I think the
term is.


Personally, I think it would be a good idea to
allow importation, since it would ultimately force the Canadians to pick up
part of the development costs that are now being born entirely by
Americans.

Bwahahahahahahahaha. You get paid off by drug companies?

Nope. My only connection to the industry is that years ago I represented an
Australian company in licensing its enteric coated antibiotic in the U.S.
(that's the technology that is now applied to the low-dosage aspirin you see
on the shelves). But I do have an interest in seeing additional development
of new drugs. That's not going to happen if the rewards for the successful
developments are absent. At the present time, Americans bear nearly all of
the development costs. The Canadians get a free ride because once the cost
of development has been covered, the cost of producing each additional dose
is relatively low. So the pharma company can sell the additional production
in Canada at the regulated price and still make a profit. It's the old
marginal revenue vs. marginal cost thing from basic economics. Allow
importation and one of the results I outlined previously will follow.

Hmmm. Didn't basic economics have something to say about monopolies and
monopoly profits? The foreign govts in the case of Australia and Canada
bargain with the drug companies directly. They have sufficient economic
clout to do so on a more level playing field. Funnily enough prices for
drugs are somewhat cheaper.

I have some sympathy with the arguments about cost of development since
the number of successes is so low. However the drug companies
collectively are very unethical organisations who don't publish the
results of failed trials and cherry-pick results wherever they can to
get their 'success' rate up. Therefore my sympathy is pretty limited.

Perhaps there needs to be a different method for companies to recover
R&D costs. Meanwhile I'm a lot bette off living where I do right now
than you people are.

PDW