E-drug: USA drug prices debate flares up (cont)
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I think it relevant to request a basis upon which to calculate the relative
amounts of capital expended in R&D costs between government and private
sector. It may simply be that the lions share of R&D are actually borne
publically and that monopolistic approaches such as patenting of products
produced at public expense by private actors is inhibiting competition--why
invest to produce a new product if getting it or a version of it from the
University where it was developed with a ten year national grant out the
door
to a friendly private actor with whom you share a board position on a
private company and secure a patent for the product? This would mean the
private dollars that ordinarily one might expect flowing to developing
"new" technologies would instead flow toward absorbing existing but
unmarketed products. The new malaria drug being given from Walter Reed
where it was developed and tested to BMS for $130, 000 American is a good
example. Why didn't Walter Reed simply bid out to produce?
David Scondras
President, Search for a Cure
Treatment Information and Advocacy
Organization is at 58 Burbank Street Boston MA 02115
Phone 617 266 0735
fax 617 266 0051
webpage sfac.org
Scondras@aol.com
[Name of sender and all contact manually added by moderator. BS]
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