rjt

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6638617.stm

All together now 'things can only get better'

TonyG

Look beyond the headlines and you will almost certainly find a pharmaceutical company orchestrating manoeuvres in the dark.
This is a typical ploy designed to press 'health' managers into spending more money on drugs that get ever more expensive and do little or nothing.

TonyG

Oh, silly me, there it is:

The research was funded by drugs firm Roche, the architects of the bird flu scam.

TonyG

Ah, now we get to the nub of the matter:

The uptake of bowel cancer treatment bevacizumab in the US was 10 times the European average, the researchers said

Bevacizumab is made by Genentech, who are clearly upset about the uptake of the drug.
Roche are 55% owners of Genentech.
Need I say more?

TonyG

No wonder I didn't recognise the name, bevacizumab, the trademark name is Avastin.
Genentech hiked the price of the drug 400% when they got approval to treat lung cancer with it. It is, after Tamiflu, Genentech's biggest cash cow.

mkpdavies

Way to spot a con.

I'm beginning to wonder if there is anything in the news now that isn't simply propaganda.

You would like to think that journalists would do a bit of digging sometimes themselves, but no, all we get is the propaganda in full.

Free press? Don't make me laugh. They are nothing but repeaters for people who have all the power and money already.

The press is a huge part of the problem for me.

__________________
http://brits4ronpaul.blogspot.com/
http://wokinglibertarians.blogspot.com/
http://lpuk.org

My ignore list

Labour, Blue Labour, Lib Dems

TonyG

And just to complete the 3 card trick:

Trastuzumab - another drug that is very familiar, AKA, Herceptin! Made by Genentech, of course.

Erlotinib is also known as Tarceva - also made by...
you guessed it, Genentech!

This is a "study" that is nothing more than typical drug company bitching about how low their profits are going to be because someone hasn't fallen for the panic button being hit again!

Herceptin and Avastin are two of the most hyped and expensive drugs in the marketplace. The normal rules don't apply in the drug world. Instead of lowering prices to make products more competetive, the companies try and embarrass or force governments into making money available by "alerting" the public to the "fact" that they are being cheated out of their "right to life-saving treatments". You then end up with badly educated, but well informed (by drug companies), campaigners taking their local HA to court to get their £50k of drugs spent on them.

You are right MK, the media ARE part of the problem. Journos are typically lazy who care little more than how many words they have to produce to fill up their allotted space. And they regularly buy into this sort of garbage because it is highly emotive, and irrational, but it sells papers and increases ratings.
Isn't that all that counts in life?

AlanA

And why do the Government not give us more information regarding vitamin B17 ?
check it out http://www.anticancerinfo.co.uk

TonyG

Try looking at the Cancer Act 1939.
Pharmaceuticals get immense protection from competition - especially anything that might undermine their total control of the sickness management system.
They have no interest at all in prevention or cures, only in treatments. Preferably those that don't work.
The longer you are sick, the more money they make.
The only people they don't make money out of are either healthy or dead.

Clippo

Ah, the big bad pharmaceutical companies again!
Most of my working life was spent in the pharmaceutical industry – for a USA company at that. I openly admit that I am biased and retired about 5 years ago but:-

Some facts:
It costs over $1 billion to develop a drug from initial discovery to marketable medicine.

Patent rights start from initial discovery. I think the current term is ~20 years. (used to be 17 yrs).

The first 10 years at least of that patent period are taken up with safety & efficacy testing with Regulatory Bodies in individual countries.

Pharmaceutical companies will obviously attempt to register a new drug in a country (or countries) where it is going to generate income the quickest. This has always been and is likely to be the USA. Delays in other countries are often due to drug companies having to present the same safety & efficacy data to the regulatory agency in that particular country. Why, these agencies can’t ‘rubber-stamp’ approval based on say the US FDA approval, which is the toughest in the world I just don’t know. (although I think there is a EU wide agency now, set up on UK principles.)

The Americans are always prepared to pay what they have to to get the best treatment.

Every year, the manufacturing companies are rigorously, & I mean rigorously, inspected to ensure the companies are adhering to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). If flaws are found, production can be shut down until corrected.
The US Food & Drugs Administration, the FDA, have the right to inspect manufacturing facilities in any country if the drug, (or intermediates making the drug) is to be sold as a medication in the USA and can shut down production in a UK company.

At the end of the patent period, any old backstreet enterprise, usually Indian, can make the drug, with no requirement to safety & efficacy apart from convincing Reg. Bodies it is the same ( similar level of impurities etc.).

National governments do ‘deals’ on the price of many drugs. In Europe, (used to be but I think still is), say a Mediterranean govt can negotiate a lower price for the drug than say UK and it is not supposed to happen but mysteriously the drug purchased in said cheap Med country is touted for sale in UK at lower than agreed price.

Pharmaceutical companies are businesses, not charities – they have to make reasonable profits to fund the development of new drugs. Their advertising is closely monitored by the Reg. Authorities.

The vast number of life saving, life extending and disease beating drugs have been developed by drug companies not hospitals or University research institutes. Ergo, they have probably made a greater contribution to your well being than the commonly held fallacy of your GP (who only looks up in a catalogue what drug to prescribe).

The NHS in this country has to compete in a relatively free market to buy drugs. Since the efficacy of many same treatment drugs is very similar, the National Institute for Health & Clinical excellence (NICE) was set up in the UK to advise the NHS of the best cost-effectiveness of similar drugs.

The big pharmaceutical companies are not angels, far from it, but they aren’t the rapacious predators socialists & left-wingers like to think they are. I think the ‘fault in all of this is our NHS mis-spending it’s money (on bloated administration, giving doctors & consultants a licence to print money in the last pay deal etc).
This particular cancer drug issue seems to be down to NICE delays.

One out of many, TonyG wrote:-
Who manufactures vaccines then ?

Rant over!