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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

Very interesting. So, can China not just reverse engineer this pill, and distribute a generic version of it anyway?

I was wondering the same thing? Why couldn't another company just make a generic and sell it if there is such a high demand.

May be they have good know-how how do this in good level of cost and price. Or may be this is completely unnecessary for them (the china government). Normally if you have pharmaceutical generics comapnies they have big portfolio of many generics drugs ("they do not keep eggs in one basket and diversification also). Create company which have only one product and sell only to China market in my opinion is pointless.

Well, I assume Gilead is allowing Chinese companies to manufacturer authorized generics at a price in line with average wages. So people in China already have access.

The other concern emerging economies like China have is they are already developing their own brand name/patented drugs. If they don't respect the US/EU patents, they can't really complain when the US/EU doesn't respect theirs. The US market makes up almost 2/3 of the western drug market, so it would be a huge lose for China.

Yes, that could be also good explanation. I assume also that China, India etc. have completely different genetic population than europe populationes. This is important at clinical trials or bioequivalence study because some drugs substances could work differently for peoples form Asia and Europe. Pharma companies run trailes e.g in China and sell drugs only for regional area (because it work) this drug will be ineffective in Europe or could to do more damage.

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