Extending drug patents (OTC Medicines in general)

Member Name: Helix

Product:	OTC Medicines in general
Date:	26/05/01 (138 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: n/a

Disadvantages: n/a

The costs Of medicines

Last week the major drug companies ended their price fixing allowing the high street consuming to purchase brand name over the counter medicines at a price considerably lower than before. For the consumer this is obviously good thing as competition between the large supermarkets will drive the price down further. As for the small family run pharmacies this is not so good with a large proportion of the profit coming from over the counter sales, the future of these convenient local shops be a fight for survival.

The big question is why where these medicines so expensive in the first place. With doctors being persuaded to prescribe drugs by their generic rather than trade marked name in a effort to cut NHS costs, very few people actually realise why these drug’s are so expensive.

All the new medicines that are available now are at least 12 years old before they reach the open market. From the identification of a useful compound the journey to active drug Is treacherous and at almost any point the compound can be rejected. As soon a chemist has isolated or synthesized a compound that is thought to have therapeutic properties, that compound is patented this means that no other company can produce the compound for commercial use for the length of the patent, and drug patents last 20 years. So as soon as the lead compound has been identified and patented they company have got 20 years to research every aspect from large scale production, delivery of the drug into the body, side affects etc . It will take 2 to 5 years to research and develop the compound into something that can then start clinical trials. The clinical trials is a long drawn out process starting in vitro and ending vivo. At every stage the drug has to prove that it’s not to toxic, the side effects do not cause other major problem and some idea of the effects of long term use are known. These trials go through several stages starting in the
lab and ending up trialing in human patients having been tested on small and large mammals previously. After the clinical trials a license must be applied for, and legal wrangling can also add another couple of years to the overall process. The drug Prozac came off its patent in February 2000, is only came on the market in 92/93 therefore the drug company involved had approximately 7 years to recoup the costs of research and development, it is no wonder that it was quite an expensive drug to prescribe. Prozac is now available under the generic name of Fluoxitine and anybody (within reason) can produce and sell it under this its generic name.

It is interesting to know that if drugs like aspirin and paracetomol were discovered today there would be no way that they be given a license, as the side effects are really nasty and they are both far to toxic. Taking an aspirin a day might keep your blood thin but it will also eventually cause the lining of your stomach to bleed. Paracetomol will do serious damage to the liver and the kidneys if only a small over dose it taken say 6 to 10 tablets depending on the size of the person in question.

The arguments that as drug companies are multinational and have huge profits is only partially true, for every enormous drug like Pfizer’s Viagra the company will also have drugs that make huge losses but are still really important and necessary medicines. It seems that a solution to this is to lengthen the time the drug stays on its patent maybe extending the time by 5 years or so.
Halving the costs of medicines will have a casualty along the line, with the local pharmacists looking the most likely candidates.

Next time that you have a nasty cough/cold/headache don’t rush to the nearest large supermarkets go to your local pharmacist, he will appreciate and need your money more than Walmart or Lord Sainsbury.

Summary: