[luso_brazilian]

> Donations are often used as a way to make others ‘pay up.’ By giving the pneumonia vaccine away for free, pharmaceutical corporations can use this as justification for why prices remain high for others, including other humanitarian organizations and developing countries that also can’t afford the vaccine.

> Countries, which continue to voice their frustration at being unable to afford new and costly vaccines such as PCV, need lower prices as well to protect children’s health.

Medicine and the pharmaceutical industry must strike a balance between the increase in innovation only healthy competition can bring (the promise of capitalism) and the public utility of their discoveries.

When that doesn't happen governments sometimes are forced to step in and take harsh measures. It happened in Brazil in the first years of the XXI century, when the government forced compulsory licensing of anti-HIV drug patents [1] so it could produce it cheaply on their own laboratories.

[1] http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news-stories/press-rele...

[kartan]

> the increase in innovation only healthy competition can bring

I think that you misspelled collaboration.

And private research is not always positive: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/public-research-pri...

[wolfgke]

> It happened in Brazil in the first years of the XXI century, when the government forced compulsory licensing of anti-HIV drug patents [1] so it could produce it cheaply on their own laboratories.

The mistake rather lies in the fact that the patents were granted. If you want competition instead of a monopoly dictating the prizes you should better not allow patents in this area.

[afarrell]

The problem here is that we are currently paying for vaccine research by promising the monopoly to allow research to recoup their costs (and the risks of plausible therapies that go nowhere). Removing that monopoly and not replacing it with something else will mean that no new therapies get developed. If we want new therapies to be developed, then we have to pay for it somehow.

We could also reduce the cost of bringing new therapies to market by having the FDA say "if your drug is approved by the EU, you can sell it in the US" as per S. 2388

[beefield]

> Removing that monopoly and not replacing it with something else will mean that no new therapies get developed.

Given that medical research is probably as close as you can get to a textbook case where patents are useful, and how obviously true many smart people think this statement is, there just _must_ be lots of robust peer reviewed academic research empirically supporting that statement.

Could someone point me to one such peer-reviewed paper?

Note that there are also opposing views. Switzerland did not have pharmaceutical patents until 1978. A quote from a famous anti-IP book[1]:

"In particular, at least between 1850 and 1980, most drugs and medical products should have been invented and produced in the United States and the United Kingdom, and very little if anything in continental Europe. Further, countries such as Italy, Switzerland and, to a lesser extent, Germany, should have been the laggards of the pharmaceutical industry until recently. Instead the opposite was true for longer than a century"

[1] http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/imbookfinalall.pdf

[true_religion]

Reading the opposing viewpoint paper is confusing. Drugs will be developed wherever the talent for their development lives, then exported to a protected environment to be sold.

Even if 100% of drugs are available patent-free in Germany, it wouldn't be very helpful to people living in the US.

[wolfgke]

> We could also reduce the cost of bringing new therapies to market by having the FDA say "if your drug is approved by the EU, you can sell it in the US" as per S. 2388

But what reason does the pharmaceutical company have to reduce the drug price in this case if it has a patent (i.e. a monopoly to dictate the price) instead of simply having more profit because of these (potential) changes in regulations?

[jcranmer]

> We could also reduce the cost of bringing new therapies to market by having the FDA say "if your drug is approved by the EU, you can sell it in the US" as per S. 2388.

This is exactly the sort of thing that TTIP is trying to do. For some reason, though, there is a lot of opposition to TTIP, not only in general, but on exactly this kind of provision.

[tssva]

My issue is that pharmaceutical companies would shop around for the country with the slackest approval requirements.

Some countries may be willing to ease approval requirements without regard to safety to draw pharmaceutical company operations there and in others whether through official policy or corruption agencies may become fee for approval businesses.

Once reciprocation is in place whether through treaty or act of Congress, due to the power of the pharmaceutical companies it will become almost impossible to end even when abuse is apparent.

In regards to S. 2388 I also oppose the provision allowing Congress to override the FDA decision to not allow a particular drug or device. It is yet another attempt to make what should be scientific decisions political ones.