Dem
49
GOP
51
The good thing about patents is that they incentivize innovation, by giving inventive people and corporations an exclusive window of opportunity to capitalize on their ideas. The bad thing is that the system is open to abuses. In the case of new medicines, the most obvious of those is price gouging. After all, if the choice is "pay" or "die," most people will choose the former, assuming they are able. Plus, much of the cost is passed on to insurers or to the federal government.
The anarchist group Four Thieves Vinegar Collective (FTVC) has been pursuing a rather interesting approach to the sky-high-price problem, one that makes it seem like they've watched more than a few episodes of Breaking Bad. In short, using their expert-level knowledge of chemistry, they have reverse-engineered various prescriptions, and developed do-it-yourself instructions that allow people to self-manufacture their own medications.
Most commonly, the group focuses on medications where, for one reason or another, the system has failed. For example, Hepatitis C can be managed with relatively affordable medications. Or, it can be cured with a 12-week course of Sovaldi. But Sovaldi pills cost $1,000, and a full course is 84 pills. And since the option to manage the disease exists, most insurers won't pay for Sovaldi. Obviously, there are plenty of people who don't have $84,000 lying around, leaving the cure therefore out of reach. That's where FTVC comes in—their alternative, which is the same molecule, costs 83 cents a pill, or less than $70 for the full course of treatment.
To take another example, Daraprim is an out-of-patent drug used to treat toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is not generally a big problem, excepting in people who are immunocompromised. For that reason, most pharmaceutical companies stopped making it—there was no real money to be made. Eventually, now-disgraced "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli noticed that his company was the only one making the drug, and increased the price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill. FTVC took up the cause, and developed a chemically identical alternative that costs $80 a bottle.
A third example involves a drug whose availability is not so much about cost, but about politics. That would be the abortifacient misoprostol. A course of that drug costs $160, which is not cheap, but is doable for most. That said, it's not doable for all, particularly if a person lives in a state that is trying to block access to the drug. So, FTVC came up with a clone that can be produced for less than a dollar.
We recognize, full well, that back-alley production of prescription drugs is a legal and moral gray area, and that it's a situation ripe for abuses. However, we take note of the work of FTVC for two reasons. The first is that they've got the science on their side. A molecule is a molecule is a molecule, and they know what is, and is not, the correct molecule. These are not people who are telling you to cure your cancer with honeyed tea and incense.
Second, it would be ideal if outside pressure on these various unjust situations could be brought 100% legally. But if it can't be brought legally, well, even illegal pressure can help change a broken system. To take one example, one of the reasons that Prohibition was repealed was all the illegal bootlegging that was going on. So, our hope would be that the availability of the pirated stuff would significantly reduce the barriers to acquiring the non-pirated stuff. That said, if a person cannot acquire their Sovaldi or Daraprim the legal way, then it is better they should have a bootleg version than to not have their meds at all.
And so, a (cautious) tip of the cap to FTVC. And have a good weekend, all! (Z)