How would big pharma react if someone did this?

by **benon** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:31 pm

This a hypothetical question, so please don't tell me every reason why this wouldn't work, that isn't the question.

Say some guy worth hundreds of billions of dollars decided he was tired of big pharma ripping people off, and making tremendous profits off of sick and dying people, and began to build pharmaceutical laboratories, and pharmaceutical factories, (and whatever is needed so that there is no middle man, this way he can keep production prices as low as possible) and began giving away drugs and medicine for no cost at all, all you would need is a prescription. Now the good thing about this is obviously, it would help so many people, but at the same time, this would ruin so many jobs. So how do you think the government and big pharma would react? I remember hearing about a law that makes it illegal for someone to create a company that's sole purpose is to destroy another company? Would the government stop someone from doing this?

by **dickens93** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:37 pm

A lot of the cost of a new drug is for the NDA process, which your hypothetical rich dude will still have to go through. If your hypothetical rich dude either did not get FDA approval, or violated patents, he would find himself in big legal trouble.

by **warton26** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:43 pm

Unless that guy spend decades and billions on R&D, he'd have no drugs to sell other than generics.

That's why drugs are expensive. The pharmaceutical companies have to make back the money on research, most of which was wasted on drugs that didn't work.

by **calvert** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:44 pm

He can't produce anything that's got a copyright, for several years after a drug is produced other companies are prevented from manufacturing it so the one that researched it can recoup their losses. If this hypothetical guy is rich enough to crash the whole industry we're looking at no new drugs for the next 5-10 years until the Chinese start making them because someone had the bright idea to destroy one of the most productive and profitable American industries.

by **nickson** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:49 pm

He can't produce anything that's got a copyright, for several years after a drug is produced other companies are prevented from manufacturing it so the one that researched it can recoup their losses. If this hypothetical guy is rich enough to crash the whole industry we're looking at no new drugs for the next 5-10 years until the Chinese start making them because someone had the bright idea to destroy one of the most productive and profitable American industries.

The FDA would simply make it impossible for any of his drugs to be approved.

by **hawiovi** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 9:59 pm

You are dreaming. One of the reasons drugs cost so much is the federal government. Drugs have to be approved by the feds before they can be sold. The last figure I say was that it cost $600 million to bring a drug to market. You want someone to spend that kind of money on his own without recovering costs? I don't think so.

by **dickens93** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 10:00 pm

You are dreaming. One of the reasons drugs cost so much is the federal government. Drugs have to be approved by the feds before they can be sold. The last figure I say was that it cost $600 million to bring a drug to market. You want someone to spend that kind of money on his own without recovering costs? I don't think so.

In the US, drugs are covered by patents. If you violate that patent, your company will be sued out of existance and your infringing product will be seized. If you try to do this overseas and ship the drugs to the US, they will be seized. If you think you have a way around this, you don't understand patent law.

If you produce drugs that are no longer under patent, then you're a generic drug maker. As long as you get the proper FDA approval, that's fine. Companies do that.

There is no law about making a company solely for the purpose of destroying another company. There is a tort called interference of contract, but that's not what you're describing.

Many people like to think of drug companies as greedy companies that are out to take all your money. The reality is that creating new drugs costs huge amounts of money, and the companies need to make enough profit to cover all that development cost.

Or, we could have a purely Communist system where the Federal Government gives out all the money for research and decides what drug research is done. "Communist" gets thrown around a lot by people who don't know what it really means, but this would truly be a communist system.

Instead, we have a hybrid system that has a big dose of capitalism along with a government that supports basic research.

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