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McCamy Taylor

(19,240 posts)
Sat Mar 28, 2020, 09:36 PM Mar 2020

How an unscrupulous person could make a killing from advocating a snake oil cure for COVID 19

There are loopholes in patents laws. For instance if you can persuade the FDA that you have a new effective treatment for a new disease using an old, out of patent medication, you can get a new patent. If you can make an old out of patent medication "time release" so you take fewer pills you can get a new patent. If you can add a separate ingredient to buffer side effects you get a new patent. If you switch one of the molecules to an isomer form you can get a new patent.

Today I hear that Rudy Giuliani got banned from Twitter for trying to promote a combination of two generic medications for COVID (not selling any snake oil here so look it up if you care to know what the two drugs are). Now, some folks may be scratching their heads trying to figure out how two fairly cheap medications can make anyone the kind of fortune that patented Tamiflu made Donald Rumsfeld back when the US under George W. Bush decided to stockpile the medication. However, it is very easy. Petition the FDA to grant a quick patent to a new combo medication that combines these two ingredients into one medication.

Won't happen? Let me tell you a story about colchicine, a drug that is older than me. It has many uses including gout treatment. An enterprising drug company managed to secure a whole new patent--and drive the price of colchicine sky high--by offering it as Colycrys in a new dosing regimen.

https://qz.com/231633/how-this-medication-became-50-times-more-expensive-overnight-in-the-us/

Note the FDA action that facilitated this was part of the Bush FDA's attempt to clear the market of major generic drug competition for some of Glaxo Smith Kline's best selling patented meds (I posted about this the day it happened but that old journal is lost).

Wanna make snake oil? Here is how. You tell the FDA you want to make a new medication. You say that it is urgently needed now so you petition to be exempted from all the usual drug trials. You create a ground swell of demand for your new drug so that the FDA will be scared to say "No." You get the president of the United States on your side so that the FDA will be scared to say "no."

At the same time, you create a shortage of the two cheap ingredients so that only your extremely expensive drugs will be available.

Pharmacy Bro would be proud.

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