--- The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > This is nonsense. Eli Lilly spent almost $1BB > taking > > Prozac from nothing to molecule to market. Do you > > know how much Lilly makes off Prozac in the US > right > > now? Essentially nothing. Not even a rounding > error. > > Lilly lost most of its Prozac market share in > _weeks_ > > Because the process to make prozac was in the patent > filing?
Since generic drug manufacturers often use a different process, I doubt that had much to do with it. Look, a drug is a molecule mated with a delivery system. That's all it is. Most drugs are actually fairly simple molecues (in relative terms). It's not that hard to figure out how to make a molecule, and everyone knows how to do it. The delivery systems are also usually fairly easy to manufacture, and quite often generic drug markers develop new ones (sometimes, better ones), so the patent application doesn't help them there either. Manufacturing is the cheapest and easiest part of the pharmaceutical industry for 99 drugs out of 100. > Good. Competition is always good, no matter what > you say. [snip] > I think the government should do the reasearch, > spend the tax dollars so > everyone can have good cost effective medicines, > that are cheap to make. > The government has no interest in making a profit, > but it does have a > very stong interest of raising the health level of > the people. You see, perhaps, the conflict between your two statements here? The government faces no competition. Government funds are spent politically and, on the whole, inefficiently. I love the NIH, but if I needed a drug to save my life, I'd rather have Merck or Pfizer believing that they could make a few billion off of it than a couple of Senators thinking that maybe they can get 3% in the opinion polls by tucking a rider into an appropriations bill on the topic. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
