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Dear all, This is an exciting topic and affects especially R&D of new antibiotics. Due to a lack of relative profitability compared to lifestyle drugs against chronic diseases, the antibiotic field has been deserted by Pharma companies. We have been misusing antibiotics for so many years, neglecting basic infection control measures and therefore, resistance is increasing dramatically in many areas of the world. The lack of new antibiotics in the near future has become a public health issue and a wide range of actions has been discussed. Usually they focus on incentives for the industry. In my opinion such one sided approach will not be successful because the industry's goal is to maximise return on investment rather than medical need. Incentives will not be sufficient to compensate for the lower profits. Antibacterial treatments will remain short duration treatments and will never compete with life-long treatments of a large part of the population or immensely expensive cancer treatments. New models of antibacterial R&D will be necessary that involve universities, the public, private sector, and open-source models (i.e. similar to activities for neglected diseases). For-profit models don't work in the field of antibacterial R&D (and probably others). I would welcome any input or experience from other fields. Best regards, Ursula Center for Anti-Infective Agents, Vienna, Austria Ursula Theuretzbacher, Ph.D. [log in to unmask] Europe Tel: +43.1.479 7024 US Tel: 650.488.4890 ______________________________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: Evidence based health (EBH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jeremy Howick Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 2:56 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Government and NICE: Myth busting Dear All, It is a commonly held myth that IT IS A GOOD THING TO HELP PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES EARN A 'REASONABLE' RETURN AND PROFIT. The dogma upon which this myth is based is that WITHOUT THE TEMPTATION OF PROFITS, PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES WOULD NOT INNOVATE, and consequently WE WOULD HAVE FEW MEDICAL ADVANCES. In fact, it might be the OPPOSITE. In the UK, the government foots the bill for medical expenses. Hence, when the NHS pays for patented medication, they pay for R&D, production, and PROFIT. Take away the PROFIT, and, by definition, health care costs go down. Where, then, would our innovations come from? There are many answers to this question. First, however consider the other advantage of taking profit out of the mix. As Neal correctly pointed out, is that patient-relevant (rather than profit-relevant) interventions are investigated more vigorously. This, in turn, would increase the quality of medical care and also likely reduce the cost. Perhaps the most fruitful alternative to patent-driven research would be to reward fruitful research groups within Universities with more PhD and postdoctoral studentships. It is also relevant, because this is often misunderstood, that patents are NOT fundamentally capitalist tools. In fact, they are government conferred MONOPOLIES on public knowledge (sometimes discovered with public funds). Best wishes, Jeremy