#pharma congress 2019

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Uncle Sam paid to develop a cancer drug and now one guy will get to charge whatever he wants for it

Today (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Tomorrow (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

The argument for pharma patents: making new medicines is expensive, and medicines are how we save ourselves from cancer and other diseases. Therefore, we will award government-backed monopolies – patents – to pharma companies so they will have an incentive to invest their shareholders' capital in research.

There's plenty wrong with this argument. For one thing, pharma companies use their monopoly winnings to sell drugs, not invent drugs. For every dollar pharma spends on research, it spends three dollars on marketing:

https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2015/05/Pharmaceutical-Marketing-and-Research-Spending-APHA-21-Oct-01.pdf

And that "R&D" isn't what you're thinking of, either. Most R&D spending goes to "evergreening" – coming up with minor variations on existing drugs in a bid to extend those patents for years or decades:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680578/

Evergreening got a lot of attention recently when John Green rained down righteous fire upon Johnson & Johnson for their sneaky tricks to prevent poor people from accessing affordable TB meds, prompting this excellent explainer from the Arm and A Leg Podcast:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/john-green-part-1/

Another thing those monopoly profits are useful for: "pay for delay," where pharma companies bribe generic manufacturers not to make cheap versions of drugs whose patents have expired. Sure, it's illegal, but that doesn't stop 'em:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/competition-enforcement/pay-delay

But it's their money, right? If they want to spend it on bribes or evergreening or marketing, at least some of that money is going into drugs that'll keep you and the people you love from enduring unimaginable pain or dying slowly and hard. Surely that warrants a patent.

Let's say it does. But what about when a pharma company gets a patent on a life-saving drug that the public paid to develop, test and refine? Publicly funded work is presumptively in the public domain, from NASA R&D to the photos that park rangers shoot of our national parks. The public pays to produce this work, so it should belong to the public, right?

That was the deal – until Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. Under Bayh-Dole, government-funded inventions are given away – to for-profit corporations, who get to charge us whatever they want to access the things we paid to make. The basis for this is a racist hoax called "The Tragedy Of the Commons," written by the eugenicist white supremacist Garrett Hardin and published by Science in 1968:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-how-ecofascism-was-smuggled-into-mainstream-thought/

Hardin invented an imaginary history in which "commons" – things owned and shared by a community – are inevitably overrun by selfish assholes, a fact that prompts nice people to also overrun these commons, so as to get some value out of them before they are gobbled up by people who read Garrett Hardin essays.

Hardin asserted this as a historical fact, but he cited no instances in which it happened. But when the Nobel-winning Elinor Ostrom actually went and looked at how commons are managed, she found that they are robust and stable over long time periods, and are a supremely efficient way of managing resources:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

The reason Hardin invented an imaginary history of tragic commons was to justify enclosure: moving things that the public owned and used freely into private ownership. Or, to put it more bluntly, Hardin invented a pseudoscientific justification for giving away parks, roads and schools to rich people and letting them charge us to use them.

To arrive at this fantasy, Hardin deployed one of the most important analytical tools of modern economics: introspection. As Ely Devons put it: "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’"

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Hardin's hoax swept from the fringes to the center and became received wisdom – so much so that by 1980, Senators Birch Bayh and Bob Dole were able to pass a law that gave away publicly funded medicine to private firms, because otherwise these inventions would be "overgrazed" by greedy people, denying the public access to livesaving drugs.

On September 21, the NIH quietly published an announcement of one of these pharmaceutical transfers, buried in a list of 31 patent assignments in the Federal Register:

https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2023-20487.pdf

The transfer in question is a patent for using T-cell receptors (TCRs) to treat solid tumors from HPV, one of the only patents for treating solid tumors with TCRs. The beneficiary of this transfer is Scarlet TCR, a Delaware company with no website or SEC filings and ownership shrouded in mystery:

https://www.bizapedia.com/de/scarlet-tcr-inc.html

One person who pays attention to this sort of thing is James Love, co-founder of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit that has worked for decades for access to medicines. Love sleuthed out at least one person behind Scarlet TCR: Christian Hinrichs, a researcher at Rutgers who used to work at the NIH's National Cancer Institute:

https://www.nih.gov/research-training/lasker-clinical-research-scholars/tenured-former-scholars

Love presumes Hinrichs is the owner of Scarlet TCR, but neither the NIH nor Scarlet TCR nor Hinrichs will confirm it. Hinrichs was one of the publicly-funded researchers who worked on the new TCR therapy, for which he received a salary.

This new drug was paid for out of the public purse. The basic R&D – salaries for Hinrichs and his collaborators, as well as funding for their facilities – came out of NIH grants. So did the funding for the initial Phase I trial, and the ongoing large Phase II trial.

As David Dayen writes in The American Prospect, the proposed patent transfer will make Hinrichs a very wealthy man (Love calls it "generational wealth"):

https://prospect.org/health/2023-10-18-nih-how-to-become-billionaire-program/

This wealth will come by charging us – the public – to access a drug that we paid to produce. The public took all the risks to develop this drug, and Hinrichs stands to become a billionaire by reaping the rewards – rewards that will come by extracting fortunes from terrified people who don't want to die from tumors that are eating them alive.

The transfer of this patent is indefensible. The government isn't even waiting until the Phase II trials are complete to hand over our commonly owned science.

But there's still time. The NIH is about to get a new director, Monica Bertagnolli – Hinrichs's former boss – who will need to go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for confirmation. Love is hoping that the confirmation hearing will present an opportunity to question Bertagnolli about the transfer – specifically, why the drug isn't being nonexclusively licensed to lots of drug companies who will have to compete to sell the cheapest possible version.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/19/solid-tumors/#t-cell-receptors

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[yourcientificgroup-blog]

Call for Participants to #Pharmaceutica 2019

the event will be held on September 09-10, 2019 at Osaka, Japan.

For more info: https://worldpharmaceuticalmeetings.com/

Abstract submission: https://worldpharmaceuticalmeetings.com/abstract-submission.php

[jsbconference-komal-blog]

Pharma Pricing & Market Access Congress 2019

[marches45]

On Monday, the Business Roundtable, a group that represents CEOs of big corporations, declared that it had changed its mind about the “purpose of a corporation.” That purpose is no longer to maximize profits for shareholders, but to benefit other “stakeholders” as well, including employees, customers, and citizens.

While the statement is a welcome repudiation of a highly influential but spurious theory of corporate responsibility, this new philosophy will not likely change the way corporations behave. The only way to force corporations to act in the public interest is to subject them to legal regulation.

The shareholder theory is usually credited to Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist and Nobel laureate. In a famous 1970 New York Times article, Friedman argued that because the CEO is an “employee” of the shareholders, he or she must act in their interest, which is to give them the highest return possible. Friedman pointed out that if a CEO acts otherwise—let’s say, donates corporate funds to an environmental cause or to an anti-poverty program—the CEO must get those funds from customers (through higher prices), workers (through lower wages), or shareholders (through lower returns). But then the CEO is just imposing a “tax” on other people, and using the funds for a social cause that he or she has no particular expertise in. It would be better to let customers, workers, or investors use that money to make their own charitable contributions if they wish to.

Friedman’s theory was wildly popular because it seemed to absolve corporations of difficult moral choices and to protect them from public criticism as long as they made profits. At the same time, it took CEOs down a peg—yes, they were resented even in 1970—by denying that they were visionaries with public responsibilities. And Wall Street saw dollar signs in the single-minded devotion to corporate profits.

But Friedman’s argument contained a contradiction that should have been evident even to readers back in 1970. He complained that business executives supported wage and price controls—a policy that President Richard Nixon would later implement. Friedman believed (with some justice) that wage and price controls would harm the economy. Thus, he claimed that the business executives, although “extremely far-sighted and clear-headed in matters that are internal to their business,” evidently became “short-sighted and muddle-headed” in matters of public import.

However, there is a simpler explanation for their behavior that does not require such a dubious theory of their psychology. Many business executives realized that wage and price controls would serve their business interest (no doubt by holding down the cost of labor and other inputs) and didn’t care whether they harmed the economy at large.

Friedman should have been, and probably was, aware of this possibility. An established business will make the most profits by eliminating competition; the tried-and-true method for doing that is to persuade the government to pass a law that discourages new firms from entering its market, or that in some other way reduces its costs. And if the purpose of a business is to “increase its profits,” as Friedman argued, then it is not only “clear-headed,” but also justifiable for a business to use its political influence to dismantle the free market that Friedman cherished.

Indeed, the notion that the big public corporations are tribunes for the free market is quixotic. Big corporations are islands of socialism within our market economy: Their bigness protects them from competition for customers and workers. Because investors of capital benefit when product and labor markets are monopolized, CEOs are only too happy to accommodate them.

There are other, all-too-familiar ways that Friedmanesque businesses can maximize their profits. They can (like Facebook) break promises to respect their customers’ privacy. They can (like Twitter and Google) generate ad revenue by facilitating the transmission of hate speech. They can (as Exxon used to do) propagandize against climate science. They can (like Jimmy John’s) use illegal contract terms to deter their low-skill workers from quitting low-paying jobs. They can (like the tobacco companies and now the tech companies) push addictive products onto children, or (like Purdue Pharma) create a generation of drug addicts. And they can engage in corporate lobbying. The biggest problem with Friedman’s theory is that corporations can—and, according to his theory, should—use their influence in Congress to block laws that stop corporations from causing such harms.

Nor was Friedman correct that business executives are the employees of the shareholders. Legally, business executives are employees of the corporation, which—crucially—they, not the shareholders, control. The shareholders have a contractual relationship with the corporation that entitles them to a share of its profits and a vote on certain major corporate decisions. Time and again, CEOs have used their power over the corporation to bat away shareholders when they propose that the corporation should act in a socially responsible way. When an employer says “jump” to an employee, the employee jumps. When shareholders say “jump” to the CEO, the CEO sues them.

Friedman’s strongest point was that business leaders are rarely qualified to determine the best public use for corporate funds. And that is why the switch to a “stakeholder” theory is hardly a guarantee that corporations will now act responsibly. The only proven way to stop corporations from polluting, defrauding, and monopolizing is to punish them through the law.

[felipeandletizia]

Felipe and Letizia retrospective: November 27th

2006: Lunch offered to the General Secretary of the OCDE

2007: Inauguration of the facilities of Palau Pharma SA & Visited El Rastrillo

2008: Meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Institute of International and Strategic Studies

2012: Opening of ‘Volunteering National Congress’ in Bilbao& Inauguration of the General Assembly of Chambers 2012, under the motto: “Chambers: 125 years working the future”

2013: 16th “Volunteer State Congress” at the Baluarte Palace in Pamplona

2014: 17th Volunteer State Congress in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. (1, 2) & 25th FIES Journalism Awards delivery to Tom Burns Marañón at la Zarzuela

2015: First meeting of the Patronage Memorial Center Foundation Victims of Terrorism at la Zarzuela

2017: Visited the San Cristobal Military Barracks in Madrid.

2018: Audiences at la Zarzuela & Received Chinese president Xi Jinping and wife Peng Liyuan for an official dinner at la Zarzuela

2019: Received the credentials of the new ambassadors of Albania, Iraq, The Netherlands, Sweden, Chile, Hungary and Israel.

2020: Virtual speech at the opening of the 5th Regional Forum of the Union for the Mediterranean

F&L Through the Years: 668/??

[stanandcharleyandfriends]

Perhaps some of you recall my posts in this blog from 2016, recounting my experiences with the Seresto collar and our Rottweiler Diego. The shelter where we’d adopted him recommended these collars highly. By the same token Diego had personality issues that had resulted in his going unadopted for more than a year. We were committed to Diego--he was a virtual twin to our recently deceased Stan and we were sure we could rehabilitate him. We brought him home, and indeed he made slow but steady process--until we made the mistake of getting him (and our other 2 dogs) new Seresto collars. Diego started showing abnormal behaviors almost immediately and became fearful & unresponsive. When my wife finally said, “Maybe it’s the collar” we took them off all the dogs. Within a day Diego’s behaviors started to improve--but it took months before he was back to normal. Then, sadly, we discovered lumps around his neck and he was diagnosed with the lymphoma that eventually led to his death. Online I encountered several warnings about these collars--they were even harmful to the people who handle animals.

The news article from the link above is copied in its entirety below. It appeared on March 19, 2021.

***

Congress seeks recall of popular Seresto flea collars possibly linked to hundreds of pet deaths

A congressional subcommittee has demanded the recall of a popular flea and tick collar that has been linked to the deaths of 1,700 pets and suspected to have caused illnesses in tens of thousands more.

In a letter to the manufacturer of the Seresto collar — a top seller on Amazon and at major US pet retailers — US Rep Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) demanded an immediate recall, citing reports that it has been involved in 75,000 harmful incidents to pets and nearly 1,000 incidents involving humans, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We believe that the actual number of deaths and injuries is much greater, since the average consumer would not know to report pet harm to EPA, an agency seemingly unrelated to consumer pet products,” Krishnamoorthi wrote in the letter.

The EPA, which regulates pet collars because they contain pesticides, also was implicated for not doing enough to address the massive number of complaints it had received, according to USA Today, which first reported the problems with the collars on March 2 along with the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

The Seresto collar “is the only flea and tick collar that combines a cocktail of two pesticides,” Krishnamoorthi wrote in a letter to Jeff Simmons, chief executive of its manufacturer, Elanco Animal Health, citing EPA data. While that may make the collars more effective against fleas, “apparently, they may be more toxic to pets and humans as well,” the lawmaker added.

One incident involving a 12-year-old boy who slept in bed with a dog wearing the collar resulted in the boy being hospitalized due to seizures and vomiting, Krishnamoorthi wrote.

In addition to demanding a recall and refunds for customers from Elanco, Krishnamoorthi, chairman of the subcommittee on economic and consumer policy, is asking German pharma giant Bayer, which originally developed the collar, to release information about its toxicity.

Among the issues legislators are looking at are all communications “between Bayer and Elanco during Elanco’s acquisition of Bayer Animal Health regarding toxicity or risks of death and injury to pets or humans from Seresto flea and tick collars and the transfer of liabilities,” according to the letter.

Bayer sold its animal health division to Elanco last year for $7.5 billion. In 2019, it reported revenues of more than $300 million from the Seresto collar.

Officials at Elanco on Friday said it is cooperating with the congressional subcommittee’s inquiry and “looks forward to explaining how the media reports on this topic have been widely refuted by toxicologists and veterinarians.” The company added that “no market action, such as a recall, is warranted, nor has it been suggested from any regulatory agency.”

“There is no medical or scientific basis to initiate a recall of Seresto collars and we are disappointed this is causing confusion and unfounded fear for pet owners trying to protect their pets from fleas and ticks,” Dr. Tony Rumschlag, senior director for technical consultants at Elanco, said in a statement to USA Today.

A retired EPA employee, Karen McCormack, disagrees, as The Post reported. The collars have the most incidents of any pesticide pet products she’s ever seen, McCormick told USA Today. Seresto is one of the most popular collars sold on Amazon, which has numerous disturbing reviews about the product.

“10 days after placing the Seresto collar on my dog, she suffered a neurological problem diagnosed as meningitis of ‘unknown origin,’” one customer wrote. “She temporarily lost the use of her hind legs and vet bills have already exceeded $5,000.”

Amazon told USA Today through a spokeswoman that it is “reviewing” the product.

***

Please: don’t use this product.

[ravnlghtft]

So far this year, Big Pharma has jacked up the prices of 21 of the 25 most expensive drugs covered by Medicare. These same drugs cost taxpayers around $47 BILLION in 2019.

Skyrocketing drug prices cost us all.

Congress must crack down on Big Pharma's price gouging. Can you add your name to our petition now, demanding that Congress act and pass Katie’s Freedom From Price Gouging Act?

[dragoni]

Kentuckians, Amy McGrath speaks the truth. Ditch Do Nothing Mitch. Vote for her in 2020. “Kentucky Blue”

“Mitch McConnell is not well liked. Many Kentuckians feel that he has left them behind, that he is a part of the D.C. sort of swamp”

Amy McGrath knows the image Mitch McConnell has: the steely, cold-but-effective master of the Senate. The tactician who will win at all costs, and who has quietly gone about enacting major pieces of President Donald Trump’s agenda and filling the federal bench with Trump appointees.

Trump: Promises Made. Promises Broken.

The problem, McGrath says, is that this is exactly backwards: The majority leader is the one preventing many of Trump’s central 2016 campaign promises from becoming reality.

“For voters, when they cast a vote for Donald Trump, he said a lot of big things,” McGrath said in an interview for POLITICO’s Women Rule podcast. 

“He said, ‘We’re going to do big things on infrastructure.’ 

He said, ‘I’m going to take it to the pharmaceutical industries and I’m going to bring down drug prices.’ 

He said he was going to fix healthcare. 

He said all of these things, and for a lot of those things, they haven’t gotten done actually because of Mitch McConnell.”

“He has actually said a few fairly bipartisan, measured things — like, hey, let’s reimport drugs across the border from Canada. Hey, let’s have Medicare renegotiate prices,” McGrath said. “Who stops all that? Mitch McConnell does, folks. Why? Because he gets the most money from big pharma than any other member of Congress, at least in the last cycle.”

“A lot of the reasons you voted for Trump—‘drain the swamp’? Folks, you can’t drain the swamp until you get rid of Mitch McConnell”

[ocasio2018]

AOC month in review: April

april came, april went. it was a little bit of a quiet month for AOC, who put her head down and did less press and social media in general. still, your Head Stan in Charge has the round-up for you.

IN THE NEWS:

imagine a green new deal future: AOC collaborated with the intercept and naomi klein to make a video essay that explores what the world could look like if the U.S. went all in on a green new deal. She also co-hosted a townhall with chris hayes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ&feature=youtu.be

time 100: weeks after being on the cover, AOC was listed as one of time’s most 100 influential people in the world. her article was written by elizabeth warren.

vox article: nisha chittal wrote an incisive piece about how the three young POC women in congress are being specifically targeted (AOC, ilhan, rashida).

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/8/18272072/ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-racism-sexism

skullduggery: AOC went on the skullduggery podcast to talk about her political ideology and how she plans to get things done.

https://twitter.com/SkullduggeryPod/status/1117777587110129671

IN CONGRESS:

AOC performed astutely (as usual) at multiple hearings on climate change, pharma, NYC housing, & banks

https://twitter.com/alexisgoldstein/status/1123276075214278658

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1116041403329417219

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1116103311474724864

https://twitter.com/blkahn/status/1115663238044246016

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1114423241358151685

https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1113534411281182726

https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1113100503901200385

ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

AOC’s top tweets!

[longwindedbore]

The cost of US “choice”: $300-700 for insulin in the US. $3-7 in Europe & Asia.

USA is # 1 in medicine prices because there is no incentive for our for-profit private insurance to negotiate prices down - just the opposite - Higher Prices = More profit for bonuses for the Insurance Execs & Boards.

Incidentally, insulin wasn’t developed at a drug company - those leeches never cure an illness. Insulin was developed at public expense at Universities in a half dozen countries.

The patent was given away free for the benefit of humanity.

Then the drug companies “donated” to Congress, stole the patent and use our position as superpower to threaten any that violate the drug companies’ “patent”.

But the EU stayed strong and forced the drug companies to sell for cost plus a reasonable profit.

In the US only diabetics die because they can’t “afford” the “choice” of artificially high prices from the Drug Oligarchy.

The foregoing doesn’t fit into an imbecilic slogan like, “where’s the money coming from?”

Answer: we don’t need extra money. Just for the Electorate to stop believing “where’s the money coming from?” I’m not optimistic.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

NEXT WEDNESDAY (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

#20yrsago Interview with me on All About Symbian https://web.archive.org/web/20041209231331/http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/viewarticle.php?id=110

#10yrsago Canadian government threatens bird watchers for writing concerned letter about bee die-off https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/revenue-canada-targets-birdwatchers-for-political-activity-1.2799546

#5yrsago Design fiction, politicized: the wearable face projector https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PoudPCevN0

#5yrsago Cable is bullshit, and so is 5G: give me fiber or give me death! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

#5yrsago Relatives and cronies of Cambodia’s dictator have bought “golden passports” from Cyprus and exfiltrated millions https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/cambodia-hunsen-wealth/

#5yrsago Berkeley city council unanimously votes to ban facial recognition technology https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/victory-berkeley-city-council-unanimously-votes-ban-face-recognition

#5yrsago Greta Grotesk: a font based on Greta Thunberg’s hand-lettered signs https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f6JdU9jG6J69mngi5-xYwbKXtCcnslJo/view

#5yrsago Leaks reveal how creepy, cultish monopolist Intuit lobbied Congress and the IRS to kill free tax-filing https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free#168905

#5yrsago 6 years after expose revealed docs taking millions from pharma companies, it’s only getting worse https://www.propublica.org/article/we-found-over-700-doctors-who-were-paid-more-than-a-million-dollars-by-drug-and-medical-device-companies#169337

#5yrsago Pacifica Radio ignores injunction, continues to play canned content on NYC’s WBAI https://gothamist.com/news/judge-rules-wbai-can-return-air-owners-refuse-comply

#5yrsago McSweeney’s: sure, Bernie is incredibly popular, but can he sway the “completely hateable assholes, who want what’s worst for everyone?” https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/bernies-policies-are-good-but-how-can-he-appeal-to-the-absolute-worst-people-ever

#5yrsago The first book collecting the new Nancy comic is incredibly, fantastically, impossibly great https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/17/the-first-book-collecting-the-new-nancy-comic-is-incredibly-fantastically-impossibly-great/

#1yrago Deb Chachra's "How Infrastructure Works" https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

[yourcientificgroup-blog]

#Scientific_program is out now for #Pharmaceutica_2019 Get your name listed and book your slot today.

Link: https://bit.ly/2GdYkiP

M: jia-xin@globalpharmaceuticalmeetings.com

Contact No: +65 3165 4229

 Follow us on:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drug_Delivery

Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jia-xin-p-6b3292184/

[jsbconference-komal-blog]

The Pharma Pricing & Market Access Congress 2019 in Amsterdam provides a platform for topics and research in the related field - jsbconference

[particularj]

Eli Lilly, the maker of Humalog, a fast acting insulin formula introduced in 1996, has responded to criticism about the cost of its medicine, which Diabetics, especially those with Type I Diabetes, need to live. After being dragged before Congress to respond to out of control prices for insulin and allegations of price fixing or gouging, Eli Lilly has decided to release an “authorized generic” of Humalog.

Eli Lilly’s CEO said in a blog post announcing the medicine, "Patients, doctors and policymakers are demanding lower list prices for medicines and lower patient costs at the pharmacy counter. ... You might be surprised to hear that we agree – it's time for change in our system and for consumer prices to come down."

Don’t be fooled by this PR stunt. While Humalog does make technical improvements on synthetic insulin (purposefully patented and relinquished for $1 ages ago to ensure people could afford it) by making it a fast-acting formula, they still charged $21 for a vial (and Diabetics usually use at least a couple vials per month) when released in 1996. Adjusted for inflation, that cost would be $33.83 today in 2019. Yet the average retail price of Humalog today is $274.70, about 9x that amount. What will the list price of the generic be? $137.75, or almost exactly half that amount but still 4x the inflation-adjusted price and equal to the price Humalog was just 6 years ago in 2012, 16 years after it was first patented. And, this generic is also made by Eli Lilly: it is an “authorized generic,” which means it is literally the exact same medicine minus the branding. So they literally could’ve charged $137.75 for Humalog itself all along (and less, as I’ve argued) but haven’t because profit.

So why the high price? Pharmaceutical manufacturers do need to recoup R&D costs, but experts agree that these costs are usually recouped within a few years for medicines as popular as Humalog and big pharma is not really increasing its R&D spending these days. So the cost today is simply inexcusable and a way to bilk people, often those on a limited income, out of the precious few dollars that they have for pure profit. Sure, insurance may cover some of the cost, but some insurance companies will only cover specific insulin types or brands even if a different type has proven better for the patient in the past, which means to get the desired and most effective brand some people have to pay out of pocket. Others, such as those with Medicare, have to pay a percentage of the cost regardless of how high the list price is, and some patients have to sometimes pay full price if they are in the absurd Medicare Part D “donut hole” of coverage. And Eli Lilly will of course try to divert attention to the cost by noting that such a small percentage of people pay retail and they offer an assistance program, but this is really smoke and mirrors. So who cares if a few die because they can’t afford it? Diabetes isn’t going away, especially because these companies aren’t researching a cure (why would they when they are literally cranking out liquid gold?).

We can’t let big pharma placate us into silence by giving us half price generics that are still obscenely over-priced. There is no shortage of this stuff and it is easy to make. Many formulas have been around for decades, and, as I’ve mentioned, the original insulin patent was given away at the nominal $1 to ensure everybody can afford it. These companies still have blood on their hands and these necessary life medicines need to be affordable for all.

[felipeandletizia]

Felipe and Letizia retrospective: November 27th

2006: Lunch offered to the General Secretary of the OCDE

2007: Inauguration of the facilities of Palau Pharma SA & Visited El Rastrillo

2008: Meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Institute of International and Strategic Studies

2012: Opening of ‘Volunteering National Congress’ in Bilbao& Inauguration of the General Assembly of Chambers 2012, under the motto: “Chambers: 125 years working the future”

2013: 16th “Volunteer State Congress” at the Baluarte Palace in Pamplona

2014: 17th Volunteer State Congress in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. (1, 2) & 25th FIES Journalism Awards delivery to Tom Burns Marañón at la Zarzuela

2015: First meeting of the Patronage Memorial Center Foundation Victims of Terrorism at la Zarzuela

2017: Visited the San Cristobal Military Barracks in Madrid.

2018: Audiences at la Zarzuela & Received Chinese president Xi Jinping and wife Peng Liyuan for an official dinner at la Zarzuela

2019: Received the credentials of the new ambassadors of Albania, Iraq, The Netherlands, Sweden, Chile, Hungary and Israel.

F&L Through the Years: 461/??

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New story in Politics from Time: Whistle-blowing Is an American Tradition–And a Bad Sign for Our Democracy

Whistle-blowing has long been a vital weapon against public and private wrongdoing in America. Just as FBI whistle-blower Mark Felt called out Richard Nixon’s systemic criminality and Karen Silkwood disclosed the massive risks of nuclear power, so today whistle-blowers are explaining how Cambridge Analytica helped to corrupt our elections or how Big Pharma hooked our nation on opioids. In 2019, a whistle-blower revealed startling facts about President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, triggering impeachment proceedings.

Whistle-blowing is based on celebrated American ideals, such as the freedom of expression, the right and duty of citizens to warn of public wrongdoing, and the importance of the individual conscience. Pioneering whistle-blower laws were passed by the Continental Congress in 1778, and by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, at the height of the Civil War.

But as important and effective as whistle-blowing has become today, its rise is actually bad news for American society in the long term– a symptom of the breakdown of internal checks and balances on our corporations and our government. This current spate of high-level disclosures by whistle-blowers coincides with the spread of cultures of secrecy, of outsourcing public goods and services to private contractors, of increasing normalization of conflict of interest and other unethical practices as clever business models, and the weakening of the very concept of public service itself. Watchdogs are disappearing, as regulators are captured, defunded or drowned out by lobbying, as local newspapers cut their staffs, and with fewer attorneys at the Department of Justice willing or able to prosecute white collar criminals. Corporate and government insiders realize that if they don’t speak out, no one will ever learn of the wrongdoing they see.

We publicly celebrate whistle-blowers in the news and in films as heroes, but in real life we allow most of them to be permanently blackballed in their chosen fields. This two-faced view toward people with the rare courage to speak truth to power suggests why whistle-blowing is so alarmingly easy to politicize. And since the basic currency of whistle-blowing is a respect for facts and the rule of law, the act of whistle-blowing, like democracy itself, is at hazard in today’s postfact world.

By Tom Mueller on