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Open Insulin, 'DIY bio' and the future of pharma
The development, manufacture and sale of pharmaceutical drugs in the United States is a complex landscape involving intellectual property and strict federal regulations. But according to Colorado State University scientists, the status quo of the U.S. pharmaceutical market may soon be turned on its head. That's due in part to a growing community of do-it-yourself "biohackers" who are disrupting business-as-usual for pharmaceutical discovery, development and distribution. A Sept. 13 perspective piece in Trends in Biotechnology [DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.07.009] [DX] frames these emerging issues, and predicts how the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. regulatory environment, will need to change in response.
[...] The authors use the California-based Open Insulin Project as a case study of how the DIY bio movement might shape the future of medicine. Founded in 2015, the project's creators are trying to increase competition in the insulin market by developing and releasing an open-source protocol for manufacturing off-patent insulin.
Why does the Open Insulin Project exist in the first place? Insulin is 100 years old, but it remains prohibitively expensive for many patients, with some uninsured patients paying up to $400 a month for this life-saving medicine. People are angry, and in some cases, people are dying, from lack of access to affordable insulin.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday September 18 2018, @12:54PM (9 children)
There are a lot of problems in and around the pharma industry. Basic capitalism works, in the sense that potential profits drive research. However, the patent system is being abused, and there is a lot of corruption in the drug approval, and the corresponding suppression of generics. Here's a three-step suggestion:
- Let companies charge whatever crazy prices they want. Do not require any insurance or government program to purchase any particular drug. If their prices are too high, no one will buy their drugs.
- Be strict about patents: one term, no renewal, no trivial adaptations (like changing dosages, etc.) that effectively extend the patent.
- Be generous with approval of generics.
The result: At latest, any drug will be available for generic manufacture after 17 years, which is not all that long in the scheme of things.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @01:51PM
Even after patent expiration, many drugs are expensive due to its niche target market and few producers. In fact, some pharma pay off generic makers to not produce out-of-patent medicines because they can both make more money that way. Market failure is built-in for medicine.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday September 18 2018, @02:08PM (2 children)
I predict that will last right up until you or someone you care about needs a few doses of a drug that costs pennies to manufacture but is nevertheless fantastically expensive in order to live long enough to see the patent expire.
Consider, Insulin has been on the market for nearly 100 years but people die regularly in the U.S. because they can't afford it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:00PM
At least he's trying to fix the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:50PM
"I want that" doesn't mean you have a right to it or will get it.
If we ban those high prices, the drugs would not likely be discovered and would certainly not undergo the required testing.
So the alternative to high prices is that there is no drug.
I guess this makes you happy? While dying due to lack of the drug, you can be comforted by knowing that well-off people are dying with you. You won't have anybody to be jealous of. Everybody suffers, not just the poor. Yay communism!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @05:55PM
You can't have basic capitalism in this market if you don't open it up to foreign companies. Big Pharma makes all this noise about how we need to keep the Government out and let the market decide, while at the same time fighting tooth-and-nail to keep the US market closed to foreign vendors because, you know, safety. There's a reason they charge the US market 10 to 100 times more for the same drug than they do in the rest of the world, and it doesn't have anything to do with safety.
Also, go back to banning them from advertising their drugs to the mass market. You can't also cry that even the tiniest drop in their profits will drive their R&D out ("we can't research the next big drugs!") when they are spending MORE on their ad market than on their R&D ("just ask your doctor about ....").
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:09PM (2 children)
It is a little early for stuff this scary but I'm not waiting 2 weeks to post
*puts on Ayn Rand Sociopath costume*
"The free market will work out all problems. Work allows people to purchase what they need to survive, so the free market is the simplest method of letting the natural process of selection work out. All the socialist programs have allowed the human population to expand without any checks or balances, but through simple supply and demand the lower tiers of humanity will eventually die off leaving us stronger and more capable than ever."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:10PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:26PM
So sayeth the king!
God wills it! god wills it!!
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:58PM
I'd also add that top on the list of perverse incentives is that fact that there's very little money to be made in curing anything as apposed to treating it for life with expensive drugs. This is why the "free market" can fucking blow me when it comes to health care in general. And yes...I'm glad to have my taxes go to health care as apposed to the shit it's doing now...especially supporting people who make more than most of our annual salaries in the time it took me to write this.