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by charlesdm 3349 days ago
I don't think Mylan's behaviour is acceptable here, but there is something to be said about being able to patent a safe delivery mechanism for any type of medicine... that in itself isn't necessarily wrong.
2 comments

Most of the "safety" in the delivery tech lies in the fact that there's only one dose of drug in the dispenser. Or, er, all of the safety? It's not an enormous achievement.

Hell, Mylan even has a competitor that made their own dispenser to avoid the patent, but ... now there are two of them playing largely the same game.

The hurdle here is FDA approval, not the innovation of delivery mechanisms. These are all relatively simple injectors, whose primary value lies in being single-dose.

Not defending Mylan or anything, but... there's more then 1 dose in an EpiPen: http://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(13)00094-X/full...
Yes, there is. But sadly enough, the game isn't about who has the safest delivery mechanism.