Patent Follies

Deadly Monopolies, Harriet A. Washington,2011

Washington is a medical ethicist and bioethicist whose attitude seems to be summed up in this quote from Thomas Browne;
“No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.”


The Real Henrietta Lacks, unsung hero of Polio vaccine

Who owns our bodies? Apparently not us judging from consistent court rulings. In 1951 tumor cells were extracted without consent from cancer patient Henrietta Lacks for further study. These cells, known as Hela were propagated and sold over and over and are still available for research today. They have generated millions of dollars in fees and have underpinned research breakthroughs and treatments too numerous to mention although their contribution to the development of Salk’s polio vaccine stands out for special mention. Henrietta’s husband had refused to consent to the cell extraction and the family only learned that the Hela line was world famous in 1994 when a son was approached to provide his cells for additional study.


Alistair Cooke’s Body Snatched

Appropriation of body parts without permission continues unabated and is a huge business worth billions today. Among those appropriated without permission were Alistair Cooke, long time host of PBS’ Masterpiece Theater. Some of these bodies including children have found themselves used in auto manufacturers crash tests.


Burroughs Ginsberg writings overturned plant patent

Then in 1980 the Bayh-Dole act was passed to allow the commercialization of patents resulting from government sponsored research. In that same year, 1980, the supreme court ruled that life can be patented leading to a gold rush of patents in plant and animal life. Traditional remedies and medicines known for hundreds or even thousands of years have been patented. Few have been overturned by the courts. A 1980’s patent on a Brazilian psychedelic plant was overturned not because of the plant’s traditional and sacred meaning to a Brazilian tribe but to the 30 year prior writings of Alan Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs. Bio-colonialism is OK but prior documented western “discovery” can be used to invalidate a patent.

While the human genome project itself and its discoveries were placed in the public domain, subsequent work to isolate individual genes responsible for certain diseases were allowed to be patented. That’s right, Alzheimer’s, cancers, and many other deadly diseases are owned and controlled by patent holders. More than 50,000, almost a fifth of all human genes are now patented, more than 36,000 by a single French company, Genset. Many genes were allowed to be patented even though researchers don’t know the gene’s function. These genes patents more than any single cause have stymied, slowed down, or even blocked outright research into tests and treatments of many deadly diseases. At the very least they have dramatically increased the cost of doing research as huge patent licensing fees must be paid.

The pharmaceutical industry was once the most profitable industry ever to exist on the planet. It has now fallen to the third most profitable and profits are in free fall off the cliff. Why? Because drug companies no longer develop important life saving blockbuster drugs like the statins (Zocor is off patent and Lipitor’s patent is expiring), but put their efforts into “me too” drugs and life enhancing drugs like Viagra or cosmetics.

They also pour enormous efforts and resources into defending through litigation and extending their patents with such tricks as combining two drugs whose patents are expiring into a “new” patentable drug, or re-branding a drug for a new purpose such as patenting an existing drug under a new name with FDA approval for use by black people (whatever that means genetically) exclusively. Remember thalidomide the drug that caused all those birth defects back in the 1950s and 1960s. Guess what, thalidomide is back as a relabeled newly patented drug for the treatment of lepers.

It costs upward of $1 million to fight a patent infringement case involving drugs. To prevent “me too” drugs, companies file not only the drug they want to market, but every near derivative they can imagine. One drug patent was surrounded by 1300 similar drug patents to make “me too” drugs virtually impossible to produce. Adding to the mess, some drug patents are 400,000 pages long (not a typo) and the company requesting the patent pays most of the patent office costs. Sounds a lot like the relationship between the ratings agencies and the financial companies who pay them. Imagine litigating over a patent that no one can possibly read or understand.

What can happen once a patent is granted for a drug? One drug capable of eliminating sleeping sickness was never marketed for that purpose but was re-branded as a facial creme to remove women’s facial hair. Not enough money in sleeping sickness? Several effective cancer drugs were not marketed because of low projected revenues and the university inventors were unable to override the company decision. Those drugs sit on the shelf useless.

Available cancer drugs have been singularly disappointing resulting in an overall extension of average American lifespans a mere four months. Yet a single course of cancer drug treatment can cost $200,000 to $300,000 each. In one case, the Canadian health system, unable to reach an acceptable price agreement with the manufacturer, paid $218,000 for one Canadian patient to travel across the border for treatment in the US. We now learn that speculators often corner the market and horde these expensive drugs in order to hold doctors-patients-hospitals hostage for incredible additional markups. Oh the wonders of unfettered capitalism.

Unable to get American consents for drug studies, companies increasingly are testing drugs in Africa and Asia where they ignore consent requirements and feel free to use placebos where they would be required to use the best available treatments for their comparisons. That’s OK, their test subjects won’t be able to get the test drug anyway after the study ends. This is The Constant Gardener on steroids. See also The Body Hunters. And if the patients or their families sue with government help as in a case in Nigeria where 11 children died during a test and many other were disabled for life, the drug company “lost” all its records yet once a settlement was negotiated was able to identify its test subjects through DNA tests. Very mysterious record disappearance. The drug was never FDA approved fortunately.

But avoiding the need for consent is not limited to poor countries but is practiced domestically as well. One company had developed a blood hemoglobin substitute whose early tests showed up bad side effects. Needing another large clinical study to proceed the company came up with a novel idea. They kept supplies of the “blood” in EMT vehicles operating in whose areas contained mostly poor, primarily black and Hispanic populations. Whenever the EMT team picked up a patient who had lost blood they administered the artificial hemoglobin rather than the usual saline solution on the trip to the hospital. The company’s thin justification for avoiding the need for consent was that the subject was unconscious (sometimes), that no family members were present (sometimes) and that treatment was urgently required. (No, saline would have stabilized the subject til arrival at the hospital.) Once in the hospital, the company extracted blood samples three times a day for the study. If a subject asked why they were told it was a normal part of their treatment. In other words the subjects were never informed that they were in the study, of the known risks and side effects of their treatment, they were lied to throughout. The FDA did not approve the hemoglobin substitute.

For those that think the horrors of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments on black soldiers is ancient history, think again. After the military grade anthrax samples were mailed to important congressmen and newsrooms, a drug company rushed to develop a vaccine for anthrax. While the vaccine was in testing and after significant problems such as loss of vision and hearing and miscarriages had already surfaced, the DOD determined to vaccinate more than 100,000 troops with the non-FDA approved drug. Thousands of soldiers refused and were dishonorably discharged from service at great cost to themselves and the military. A pregnant soldier asked to be transferred but her commanding officer not only denied the transfer but forcibly had her vaccinated as an example. She miscarried. The FDA never approved the vaccination but the soldiers learned they had no legal recourse either against the military or the drug company. Today thousands of former soldiers suffer from the side effects.

Also on the subject of bio-colonialism, researchers are increasingly descending on isolated groups of people whose isolation give them a limited gene pool and therefore makes them useful for isolating particular disease’s genetic causes. Thus Easter Island, Hawaiians, a 2000 year old group of Jews in India are recruited for studies for which they are unlikely to benefit. An interesting example is Iceland where an Icelandic researcher formed his own company and set out to collect samples and information promising financial rewards and medical breakthroughs beneficial to Icelanders. Icelanders love genealogy and can track their ancestry often back to a Viking. They also keep extensive medical records tracing back for generations. Thus the researcher was able to put together a uniquely valuable data base with cell samples. Unfortunately breakthroughs and profits eluded him and the company fell into bankruptcy where control of the valuable data was lost. The information has now been sold to drug companies and insurance companies (Did you know your disqualifying pre-condition originated with some ancient viking?) The possible horrors are hard to contemplate.

While government grants still fund the vast majority of research on disease and treatment, the drug companies have dominated the control and marketing of the resulting breakthroughs. Drug companies also include the government subsidies when justifying high drug prices. A Pharma sponsored study put the average cost per drug at $800 million which they round to a billion in talking points. Ralph Nader’s group, using Pharma’s own numbers puts the actual cost at about $100 million, still serious money.

The patenting mess has drawn the universities and other institutions into a dependency on marketing their patents and research that has totally compromised their role as independent investigators. One researcher assembled the worlds most valuable collection of cells and materials to study Alzheimer’s only to see his University of Washington sell the collection to Pfizer. He and his subjects were unable to reverse the sale. In one court case, Duke argued that their university researchers should be protected in their investigations only to have the court rule that since Duke patents research and sells licenses they are indistinguishable from any other corporation and their employees cannot be expected to have special privileges. Universities are no longer special. Further, virtually all researchers whether in the University or elsewhere are on the take from the drug companies.

Professional journals such as JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine have been compromised to the point they are little more than paid drug ads. Journal articles are ghost written by drug employees with the named authors having no access to the underlying research numbers. Because everyone qualified is on the take, independent peer review of articles is no longer possible. The big danger in all this is that drug companies are able to hide and lie about the actual clinical trial results and cover over or minimize side effects. Thus doctors who rely on journals to keep up with medical advances are mislead as to the true risks of the drugs they prescribe.

Even worse, doctors are on the take to the tune of $6 billion a year with an additional $2 billion in junkets. How can a patient rely on a corrupted doctor’s recommendations for treatment?

Drug companies also contribute financially to the FDA’s operating costs. This gives them the power to remove FDA officials who may oppose approval. The FDA has moved from denying approval of questionable new drugs to requiring larger warning labels as if this will prevent or limit the drug’s inappropriate use. When a drug is pulled by the FDA it often is re targeted and relabeled and reintroduced with FDA approval such as the infamous thalidomide.


Lula da Silva announces Brazil’s HIV march-in

Governments all have the ability to require “compulsory licenses” for critical drugs like those for HIV. Brazil shocked Pharma in 2007 by announcing a compulsory license for Merck’s HIV efavirenz. India has long ignored drug patents and have become proficient as reverse engineering patented drugs. Brazil’s action has set off a chain reaction among other governments causing the drug industry to start to rethink its pricing policies for poor countries. In the last 20 years only 4 drugs have been developed for diseases unique to poor countries. One of those is sold only as a vaccine for visitors to those poor areas not for the residents themselves.

The Gates Foundation, WHO, and other groups are experimenting with a new model where entire governments in poor countries guarantee a market for a drug to treat diseases like sleeping sickness or malaria. It is hoped the guarantee will finally induce drug companies into manufacturing drugs for these diseases. International organizations are also encouraging drug companies to think of pricing tiers for poor countries and are helping to police the illegal re-importation of the cheap drugs. The actions of Brazil and India are encouraging this trend but counter pressures come from WTO attempts to enforce intellectual property rights, i.e. patents.

There have also been a few cases where gene patents have been overturned, most famously for the seven ovarian cancer patents on the genes BRAC1 and BRAC2. This case has been appealed and will likely end before the supreme court. Still this temporary limited victory gives Washington hope that things might be reversing and ever optimistic, she looks forward to the day when Bayh-Dole will be eliminated and the plant and animal and gene patent rulings reversed. Dream on. At least patents expire after twenty years unless companies figure cleaver ways to extend them so research and development may be able to resume after this wasteful interregnum.