[drabiega]

I'm not sure why you need to get hypothetical here. Clearly, they currently have sufficient incentive since they're currently investing in research. They are trying to get a likely small amount of additional money (the people in India who could actually afford their prices) in return for an immense cost human cost.(The people who would lose access because of their prices) Why would anyone not oppose this?

[saint_fiasco]

>Clearly, they currently have sufficient incentive since they're currently investing in research

Drug research takes a long time. The drugs that cause this debate are drugs that the pharmaceutical companies decided to research decades ago, when they seriously expected people would respect intellectual property rights more than human lives.

Now that they know better, they will probably go invent a new Viagra or something instead of inventing something useful which can be prematurely generified for the common good.

[meric]

And that's okay. I'll take millions of Indian lives now than thousands of American's and hundreds of Indians in ten years - when a new drug that can save some lives potentially comes onto the market, a new drug not many people can afford.

[saint_fiasco]

I'm not sure where you are getting those numbers. It's very difficult to calculate the costs in human lives of all the drugs that won't be invented in the future.

Lots of people are already dying of antibiotic resistant bacteria, for example, and that's a problem likely to get worse over time.

[meric]

The average Indian cannot afford to take a 1USD per tablet drug once a day. So if that's how all the new drugs are going to be priced - significantly higher than generics, then I say India should go ahead and make generic versions of those drugs, even if it will in future break international law. Who are you to say they should sacrifice their lives so you can have access to better drugs 10 years later that they can't afford anyway?

[saint_fiasco]

India can make generic versions of old drugs. For people who can't afford 1USD a day, having access to bleeding edge medicine isn't going to make as much of a difference as having access to nurses and penicillin. edit: and sanitation, and health education, and so on.

EDIT: Not to mention having their own research and development. I bet it's cheaper to research stuff in India, but evil selfish pharma companies don't want to invest in research in countries with poor intellectual properties protection.

[meric]

Did you know if a pharma company takes an old drug and a new chemical to it to change its effects slightly, the patent is renewed, and that way it it never actually becomes 'old' enough? India will go on and ignore these patents to make generic drugs. Millions of indians have access to affordable medicine today. We can worry about the future benefits when you successfully petition oil companies to stop drilling for oil and invest in renewables instead. The Indian pharmaceutical industry is vibrant and thriving, that is why it has the capacity to reproduce generic versions of patented drugs at will.

You can live a perfectly fine, if frugal, life in India on USD $2 a day, but not if you have to pay for USD $1 tablets.

[meric]

They don't even need the information published - many of the patented medicines are simply reverse engineered in India.

[ekianjo]

You don't need to "reverse engineer" anything. The large majority of the drugs of the market are in the category of small molecules and they are well known and described everywhere. Any organic chemist from any university can draft a synthesis path.

the only thing holding the system in place are the patents, not the knowledge.

[1971genocide]

As someone who did AP chemistry and then went straight into programming. How would I go about learning more of this knowledge ?

[ekianjo]

Go back to get a Master's in Organic Chemistry like everyone else :) You can find books and online resources, but for actual hands-on practice you need to have labs at hand. (Disclosure: I'm an Organic Chemist).

[qwerty85344324i]

They're investing in research on the expectation that their patents will be honored. If patents are ignored, what do you think this will do to any future research that requires tons in capital expenditures?

[newjersey]

Their patents continue to be honored in the US. I don't think we have any right to ask India to honor US patents unless they are exporting the products to the US.

This is money grab. There is no way to justify it. If they think the money isn't there, they are more than welcome to stop the research.

[Thriptic]

What happens when more countries decide that they're only willing to pay generic prices. The financial incentive to do the R&D will disappear.

[fla]

But up to what point ? What happens when investing into research becomes too risky ? This is a tough problem.

[nnain]

qwerty's question isn't hypothetical. Pharma research indeed is a high stakes game.

What's more appropriate to ask though is how do developing/under-developed countries compete with the money spending power of west. Are the poor people forever destined to look for aid from the west? If they ain't creating all the drugs, they ain't creating all the horrible diseases either. Many tribes were perfectly happy and healthy until the intruders affected their ecosystem.

[mjburgess]

Many tribes were perfectly happy and healthy until the intruders affected their ecosystem.

No. That's just your american white guilt playing up.