alt Hacker NewsA lot of potential treatments are too easily available and can't be patented. If a big pharma company can't make massive profit from it, they won't bother bringing it to market. Consider that a not-good reason.
Other treatments may eventually prove to have too many serious negative side effects. That's a good reason to abandon them.
Replies
megaman821 • last Thursday at 1:55 AM
Why would a China or India care if it were a viable treatment? Unless a country wants to use their population as lab rats, it takes money and scientists to actually confirm a treatment is safe and effective.
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justinclift • last Thursday at 1:57 AM
Wonder if some form of FOSS approach would work as an alternative development model for pharma?
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dboreham • last Thursday at 1:56 AM
Kind of like open source software.
> A lot of potential treatments are too easily available and can't be patented.
This isn’t really an obstacle, at least not as much as it’s made out to be.
There are numerous examples of drugs being brought to market at high prices despite having been generic compounds. Even old drugs can be brought back at $1000/month or more at different doses or delivery mechanisms.
One example: Doxepin is an old antidepressant that is extremely cheap. It was recently re-certified for sleep at lower doses and reintroduced at low doses at a much higher price, despite being “off patent”.
This happens all the time. The drug companies aren’t actually abandoning usable treatments due to patent issues as much as journalists have claimed. If they couldn’t, for some reason, find a way to charge for it they could still use it as a basis for finding an improved relayed compound with more targeted effects, better pharmacokinetics, etc.
They’re not just dropping promising treatments anywhere if there’s a market for them.