I’m “fortunate” … no insurance and not a lot of money make me eligible for some hefty subsidies by the pharmaceutical company. Still, I noticed that in the 8 years that I’ve been using the stuff, it’s been modified so that it didn’t need refrigeration. In addition there were 2 or 3 modifications in the mixing/delivery system. I suspect that all of those “changes” extended the patent although arguably, only the first change was because of a change in the drug itself.

Within the last several months, some company was granted the right to sell generic Betaseron, but it’s not on the market yet that I know of.

This drug has been available for over 15 years. At the local Walgreens, it sells for over $3,300/month.

Academic science is a big fame-, big money business. The quest for fame and credit have been there since before Jenner and Salk, and the quest for cash kicked into high gear with the Bayh-Dole act. Universities and academic researchers are required by law to patent and maximally commercialize any discovery they make using government funding (a process I wholeheartedly support). The heroic scientist burning the midnight bunsen for the good of humanity is, and always has been, a theatrical fantasy.

To paint academics as pure scientists with no desire for profit and fame is utterly naive. One of my thesis committee members is independently wealthy (a multimillionaire since age 41) from the royalties he receives for an antibody he developed in the late 1980′s. Can you guess who sells the drug developed from his discoveries? Yep, the only organizations with the wherewithall to run successful clinical trials, Big Pharma. Another committee member started his own biotech company seven years ago, and is focused like a laser beam on one thing, getting bought out by…wait for it…Big Pharma, so they can develop the drug he and his company can’t (and make him rich in the process).

2. Yes, I am aware that corporations are large and complicated, and they frequently do bad things.

3. No, I don’t believe that there are smoky room decisions being made to quash new discoveries for some devious agenda. I do believe that mankind sent several spaceships to the moon, that 9/11 was not a US government-led false flag attack, that the Bilderberger/Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy to control the global economy is a racist myth.

You are apparently unaware (or are simply dismissive) of the immediate availability of accessible, high quality scientific information to everyone with internet access. Even IF nefarious polymaths inhabit the boardrooms of Pharma and quash breakthroughs for financial gain, there is simply no way to prevent others from making the same discovery (and cashing in). There just aren’t that many original ideas out there, and everyone is scrambling around picking at the same crumbs of data trying to make sense of cancer.

For this whack-job conspiracy theory to be true, tens of thousands of scientists the world over would have to first suppress their own desires for fame and fortune, then successfully conspire with hundreds of thousands of Pharma industry employees to keep such secrets under wraps.

It’s almost too stupid a concept to be insulting. Maybe I should just grow thicker skin.

My brother-in-law died from Multiplemyloma. He was not only a victim of cancer but also of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. One of the drugs that was prescribed for him, as perverse as it may seem, was Thalidomide. Doctors prescribed this drug as a sleeping pill for pregnant women in the 60′s and it was taken off the mass market because it was found to cause birth-defects. The drug is now prescribed not as a sleeping pill but in some instances as a treatment for certain types of cancer in hopes of putting the patient in remission.

A prescription in 2003 (40 years later) for a 30 day supply of this drug was $992 each month. My brother-in-law’s doctor at Cedar Sinai was told us that it cost $30 to make.

What gives Anna Eschoo the right to put “life support” out of reach for millions of Americans? If I were gracious I would say she is ignorant but I am not. Anna Eshoo is honoring her $712K donor.

Our story is no different than millions of others who are in this fight and I can assure you that I have the office of Rep. Eshoo on auto dial.

The seven year compromise is a sensible one.

2) As my link noted, Goldman Sachs has for 30 years gained control of medical technology and treatments. You are not concerned.

I would be happy to research anti-cancer treatments, and I do that in a small way. But I am not a corporatist. And I hope your research is not done just for the profits. But every day Pharmaceuticals diminsh the health care in this country.