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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

The author is talking about a market category in which successful drugs are worth billions. If these Russian drugs are so effective, why isn't some pharma firm in the US driving them through testing? The answer can't be "because the FDA is capricious and rejects drugs at the last minute", because that problem applies to all drug research, and we obviously have a lot of drug research.

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But we have patents, as well. If a major US drug company invents a new superdrug, and spend decades and billions of dollars to get it approved, they can at least be sure that if it gets approved they will get the royalties from its sale.

But if a company spends decades and billions of dollars fighting for the approval of a drug they do not hold the patent on, they are by no means guaranteed making even a single penny of that investment back, even in the best case scenario where it succeeds in getting through the FDA.s

Hyperbole. Marketing is how the rest of us sell things. Giant drug company would have many advantages there. They are likely to sell boatloads of product regardless of patents. The patent is a greedy attempt to dominate the market legally in addition to commercially by creating a monopoly.

It's not how many they sell that matters, but how much money they make on them and how that compares to the cost of getting a drug through the FDA approval process.

To say that drug patents are nothing but greed is way off base. The cost of R&D together with the work needed for FDA approval is typically astronomical – the only way you're recouping that is with a monopoly and a high price.

If that was true, why do major pharmaceutical companies spend way more money on advertising than on R&D?

(Trivially searchable, for example here: http://adage.com/article/special-report-pg-at-175/procter-ga...)

The drug industry is very different from other industries because of generics. The FDA has an approval pathway that allows you to say "my drug is identical to that other drug". Also, many states have legislation that requires pharmacists to fill Rx with generics. Marketing won't do a whole lot to help that.

If the same thing happened to the tech industry, it would work like this... you create an awesome new gadget and a competitor creates a copy. The gov't certifies this copy as "exactly the same". When you go to purchase the fancy gadget at the store, the clerk automatically gives you the cheaper copy without even asking.

Again, not something marketing can help a whole lot with.

Funny, my pharmacist has never done this. My doc prescribes, and she asks me if a Generic would do? Usually she advises against it.

It all depends on your state's laws. Some go as far as requiring the pharmacist to dispense the generic unless the doctor writes "DAW" (dispense as written) on the Rx. Others just have to ask if the generic is OK.

Most of those laws are on the books because gov't funded health insurance (Medicare, Medicaid) don't like to pay brand name prices when generics are available.

Successful drugs, or successful drugs that are eligible for patent protection? I imagine[1] it would be much harder to turn a profit on the massive upfront costs if you immediately had to compete with the existing manufacturers at generic-scale prices.

It seems like it might be useful (assuming it isn't already) to separate the rights concerning drug discovery and those demonstrating efficacy/safety to allow costs to be recovered.

Then again, it needs to be weighed against the inevitable rent-seeking that pharma has a name for.

[1] but don't have any evidence handy to back it up, so ICBW.

The answer may be one of:

* US pharma is developing a me-too / copycat drug that has very similar molecular structure

* US pharma has tried and it failed before public announcement (oh there are so many of them)

* US pharma negotiated contract and found that the Russians are non-negotiable :)

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