Off Topic DIY drugs: should hospitals make their own medicine?

[helvella]

A Guardian story about a non-thyroid medicine in another country. But has such potential relevance that I feel it worth posting.

DIY drugs: should hospitals make their own medicine?

If pharmaceutical companies rapidly inflate the price of their products, is there an alternative? One Dutch chemist thinks so. By Chris Stokel-Walker

theguardian.com/science/201...

Strikes me that if the pharmaceutical company acted as it appears, then any intellectual or other rights they might claim should be forfeited. Those rights are available under the law as a way of encouraging investment and continued manufacture with rewards going to those who invent, develop, etc. Not to be able to blackmail those who need to pay with the lives and well-being of patients.

[Hillwoman]

I've just finished reading this article and was about to post it myself. Interesting, very interesting. Shows what can be done when health professionals and regulatory bodies are so minded.

[Marz]

A long but very interesting read - thank you ...

[LindaC]

Something surely has to give!? Thank you, very interesting indeed and thought provoking on several levels. Notwithstanding cost issues:

"So Kemper began researching where she could find the ingredients to make CDCA. It was difficult: in the pursuit of better margins, vast numbers of manufacturing companies have closed their factories across the world and concentrated their efforts in China, where the costs of producing pharmaceutical ingredients are lower." Oh well, sign of the times.

[seeking-answers]

Thank you very much for the posting. Found it fascinating and an all too true "sign of the times".....

[helvella]

Thinking about this topic some more.

Mercury Pharma (now Advanz) have never made liothyronine tablets. They have always been manufactured under contract.

I can't imagine Advanz pay any more than they have to for that manufacturing process.

If the NHS and/or the Competition and Markets Authority decide that Advanz (and the other companies) are charging too much for liothyronine, one obvious route would be to get it manufactured under contract just like Advanz do.

This seems a more realistic proposition than actually setting up NHS manufacturing within hospitals.

I don't have a problem with companies making a sensible profit from supplying goods and services. It is that Advanz are in the position to set any price they like, and do not actually have to justify it. A contract manufacturing arrangement would not be open in the same way to exploitation.