Sean Hocking
Pharmaceutical patents are used to increase monopolies, resulting in excessive drug costs, and lowered entry. Will the psychedelic business observe go well with?
Vice..
The chemical make-up of naloxone has been identified since 1961; it’s an old and cheap life-saving drug that may shortly reverse an opioid overdose. However Evzio, a naloxone auto-injector made by pharmaceutical firm Kaléo, has often undergone dramatic price increases, at one level costing $4,500 for a two-pack. Due to its steep value, insurance coverage corporations typically require submission of prior authorization requests earlier than they approve protection for it—placing it out of attain for individuals who may want it.
It’s a typical story within the U.S.: An outdated and low cost drug was remodeled into an costly, inaccessible product. This occurred by means of patents, legally granted rights to exclude others from making or promoting an invention. Kaléo has 25 patents on Evzio in whole, the most recent of which expires in July 2034.
What precisely did Kaléo invent? “A more in-depth look reveals that not solely are the patents overlapping, fairly than distinct, however that 9 of the innovations have the very same identify and are a part of the identical patent ‘household,’ masking modified variations of the identical invention with barely totally different dates of expiration,” wrote Colleen Chien, a regulation professor at Santa Clara College Faculty of Legislation, in a 2022 paper titled “The Inequalities of Innovation.”
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbyz5/psychedelic-patents-are-broken-because-the-patent-system-is-broken