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A comment on DIY recipes to make your own expensive pharma drugs. Parent comment

Re:DIY recipes to make your own expensive pharma drugs by opportune on Friday October 13, 2017 @10:43PM (#15470397)
Then nobody will make them. Their prices would be even more astronomical than they already are without the large subsidies they receive.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DIY recipes to make your own expensive pharma drugs by mirimir on Saturday October 14, 2017 @12:03AM (#15470672)
That's why I said "not-for-profit" production. I mean, it's not like these drugs cost any more to manufacture than other drugs. It's that the patent holder seeks to recover their development cost on a much smaller sales volume.
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Re:DIY recipes to make your own expensive pharma drugs by mattnewton on Friday October 13, 2017 @10:47PM (#15470402)
Plenty of people make money off generics. Even with lower market share you can charge slightly higher prices, but not too high or someone else will undercut. Today they have a monopoly.
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Re:DIY recipes to make your own expensive pharma drugs by opportune on Friday October 13, 2017 @10:58PM (#15470441)
That's because those generics have already been through the capital intensive process of getting FDA approval. The monopoly is intended to incentivize actually bringing the drug to market. I suppose there are countries without this process, but I also would wager they do not produce nearly as many new drugs (or new orphan drugs) proportionally to the US
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Re:DIY recipes to make your own expensive pharma drugs by fjsolwmv on Friday October 13, 2017 @11:18PM (#15470507)
An orphan drug is by definition a drug with no generics on the market.
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Re:DIY recipes to make your own expensive pharma drugs by Mz on Friday October 13, 2017 @11:45PM (#15470602)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_drug

An orphan drug is a pharmaceutical agent that has been developed specifically to treat a rare medical condition, the condition itself being referred to as an orphan disease.

A rare disease, also referred to as an "orphan disease", is any disease which affects a small percentage of the population. Most rare diseases are genetic

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Re:DIY recipes to make your own expensive pharma drugs by mirimir on Friday October 13, 2017 @11:59PM (#15470661)
Well, I was mainly talking about orphan drugs that aren't yet commercialized. Once they're commercialized, they're still called orphan drugs, but maybe that should be "formerly orphan drugs" or whatever.

And yes, one of the incentives to encourage commercialization of orphan drugs is extended exclusivity.

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