How are they going to know if a doctor does this? They wonât. I say f*ck em and let the doctors prescribe what they want.
Leave it to big business to actively seek out another level of douchery. Donât they have PR guys to tell them how this oneâs going to look in the light of day?
Pfuck Pfizer.
That wouldnât fly in the US, and Iâm really surprised it does in the EU.
Are you joking? Pharma owns the US Congress. When the Medicare Part D law was passed, they actually made it illegal for the government to negotiate volume discounts. But only to protect the seniors, of course.
As I understand it, in the US patents only affect the creation and sales of products, not their use. If this is incorrect, Iâll welcome a correction.
Unless the medical privacy laws of the jurisdiction are damned ironclad, it might not actually be that difficultâŚ
At least in the US, it is far more common than one would like for drug companies(and possibly other interested parties) to tap every plausible source of information(pharmacies, any third parties involved in electronic prescription transfers, etc.) to build dossiers on doctorsâ prescribing habits, in order to betterâŚcultivate customer relationshipsâŚ
Depending on how good those data are in the UK, they could get a ratio of generic/name-brand prescription, and judge it against expected rates of the condition for which it is patented and not patented within a given doctorâs area of practice. Maybe Rupert Murdockâs sleazy private eyes could help out.
It really depends on how many bridges they are willing to burn(and state inquiries aimed at calming the public and/or saving the NHS money) they are willing to risk. The inferential attacks to identify plausible targets, followed by financially ruinous harassment-by-lawsuit is the easy bit. The question is whether theyâll be willing to risk the possible blowback.
Ah, Big Pharma. Canât say too much against them, since they did fund my childhoodâŚ
I do remember the Losec/Nexium malarkey a few years ago when when the patent ran out, they basically tried to patent the mirror image drug and claim it was more effective than a mixture of the two by using some dodgy studiesâŚ
Our data protection laws are, or were, pretty good; though unfortunately, the govât decided selling all our medical data would be a really nifty plan. Iâd happily accept the loss of some lovely architecture in return for a good-sized meteor strike on the Houses of Parliament given my druthersâŚ
No, thatâs not correct - US patents can cover one of four things:
- a novel composition of matter
- the novel manufacture of that composition of matter
- a novel machine used in the manufacture of a composition of matter
- a novel method of use of a machine or composition of matter
I meant in the sense of what they prohibit or allow, not patentability.
This argument is so painful I may need some pregabalin. rimshot
But in the US I would be surprised if this held up legally.
" The practice, called âoff-labelâ prescribing, is entirely legal and very common. More than one in five outpatient prescriptions written in the U.S. are for off-label therapies."
Source: webmd
We need molecular assemblers (or at least ad-hoc 3d-printed <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microreactor">microreactors, already a partially existing tech). Then we can get the big pharma (and possibly even the docs, and certainly the govt and its imposed limits to presc stuff access) out of the loop.
Is amusing a cat with a laser pointer still under patent?
Even if the legal argument did hold, it wouldnât change the legal status of off-label prescription(pretty much any MD can prescribe basically anything for anything, within the limits of âthatâs too crazy/risky, my malpractice coverage will drop meâ and âif I prescribe too much of that the DEA will think Iâm running a pill millâ). It would just change whether or not (legally) writing that prescription exposed the doctor to civil liability in a suit by Pfizer or not.
As for that, no idea.
This blog post seems legit
Nexiumâs Dirty Little Secret. Donât discount chirality; itâs what caused the Thalidomide disaster. AlthoughâŚ
Whatâs also interesting to me (which I did not know until I was reading up for this post), is that omeprazole and esomeprazole are technically prodrugs: the ingested compound is not actually the active molecule. Under acidic conditions (like in gastric acid), omeprazole is converted to a tetracyclic cation which is then covalently bound to ATPase:
Note that the tetracycle is achiral â it has no stereocenters, sulfur or otherwise. So whether you take the chiral esomeprazole or the racemic omeprazole, both are converted to the same achiral tetracycle. Again something to note if youâre taking the optically pure version of the drug.
Yeah, and that is what makes that letter so tone deaf. Considering that civil litigation in the US and UK comes down to âhow much is each party willing to spendâ and you can civilly sue for almost anything, the intent and logic is just tortured.
And lastly, it is my opinion (not fact, case law, or precedentâsimply opinion) that IP shouldnât be a gating factor in human health. That concept is so evil it makes me want to throw things.
On the other hand, Pfizer has to invest in the development of new drugs. The more revenue they get from their product, the better will be the drugs in the future. I take Carbamazapine for epilepsy, but it can also be prescribed for trigeminal neuralgia. I buy the Tegretol product from Novartis, partly because its what I have always taken, and partly because the price advantage of using the generic product isnât very great where I live.
But I am aware that if Novartis didnât make enough money off Tegretol, they wouldnât make it and my life would be much more limited than it is right now.
With that, also take a lesson from the basement chemists always evolving designer drug endeavors. Alter the molecule just slightly to sidestep the law. In this case patent law rather than criminal drug law.
