Isn't all the cost in developing the first pill? It's sort of like software. Sure, it's easy to make millions of copies after you spend the years of work and millions/billions of dollars. Yes, India has hundreds of millions of poor people. Wouldn't it be beneficial if it developed new drugs to help their citizens and sell them with the world? I imagine India could become Big Pharma of the 21st Century.
(I was born and raised in India, now involved in biomed research in US).
This is absolutely and completely correct. For every compound that makes to the clinic, there are 1000s that fail at the preclinical or clinical stages: worst case in Phase III when 100s of millions of dollars have already been spent on it. India, in its shortsighted view, is refusing to acknowledge the effort and money that goes into bringing a molecule to the clinic.
India is notoriously shortsighted when it comes to biomedical research. Here's a classic example: In response to a Texas company that tried to patent an indigenous Basmati species under the name Texmati, the govt imposed a blanket ban on the export of any indigenous DNA outside. What is the result of that? When the global HAPMAP projects began to genotype humans of all races and ethnicity and trace human history, Indians couldn't be genotyped because of the (Texmati) DNA law. HAPMAP ended up recruiting Indians living in US and UK. Now when the world is starting to reap some of the benefits of HAPMAP, India is at the forefront criticizing "bullies" like the US for not paying attention to diseases with restricted incidence in, say, India.
The Texmati issue though was one thing that caused India to dig its heels in. Trying to patent something indegenous posed a major threat.
Producing proven drugs at affordable prices surely has a much better cost/benefit ratio.
dont no why the world (EURO) does not see that US is a big bully to other nations.