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Editorial: In drugmakers' world, principles battle profits

 
Three Nobel Prize winners are sterling examples of how dedicated scientists, agencies and, yes, Big Pharma can change the world. Meanwhile, opportunistic investors are making lucrative discoveries of their own.
Three Nobel Prize winners are sterling examples of how dedicated scientists, agencies and, yes, Big Pharma can change the world. Meanwhile, opportunistic investors are making lucrative discoveries of their own.
Published Oct. 9, 2015

A few thoughts on parasites.

William Campbell of the United States and Satoshi Omura of Japan, who shared the 2015 Nobel Prize for medicine this week, made discoveries that helped eradicate river blindness in parts of Latin America and Africa. The condition is caused by a parasitic worm that can cause such grievous itching that people claw raw wounds in their skin trying to dig it out. Eye damage causes irreversible blindness.

Campbell's employer, Merck & Co., turned his work into a commercially successful treatment for worms in farm animals and pets, then donated the technology in 1987 for human application in poverty-stricken countries. The World Heath Organization, the Carter Center and others now use the medicine to kill parasite larvae that have infected 25 million people.

A third Nobel winner, Tu Youyou, unlocked secrets from ancient Chinese herbal remedies to treat malaria, another parasitical disease. Novartis refined her discovery, then provided medicine at cost through the World Health Organization to reduce suffering and death throughout the world.

These are sterling examples of how dedicated scientists, agencies and, yes, Big Pharma can change the world. Meanwhile, opportunistic investors are making lucrative discoveries of their own. America's unwillingness to control drug prices or allow importation of foreign drugs creates pockets of profit that have nothing to do with covering the cost of drug research.

This year, investor startup Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to Daraprim, a 62-year-old medicine that treats a parasitic disease called toxoplasmosis. Spread through cat feces, it is usually benign but can be exceedingly dangerous to some newborns and people with AIDS. Turing jacked up the price of treatment from about $810 to $45,000, according to the New York Times. The drug lacks patent protection but its small patient base discourages competing drugmakers from spending time and resources to bring a generic equivalent to market.

In turn, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International bought the rights to Cuprimine, a treatment for a rare liver disease. A generic equivalent in Canada goes for $66 for 100 pills — a one-month supply for some patients. Valeant raised the U.S. price from $888 to $26,189. Though Medicare and other insurers bear the brunt of this escalation, co-payments for patients now can top $20,000 a year.

America sorely needs to abandon its role as the world's pharmaceutical sugar daddy. Manufacturers must have sufficient revenue to encourage innovation, but feeding on the misery of others must stop.