I've been taking the "blockbuster drug", Humira/Adalimumab, for more than 10 years. Humira alone is estimated to have generated US$200 billion in profits for a single company. Its history, its legal and commercial maneuvers are appalling and possibly the poster child for what is wrong with the patent system. And how public money originally funds much of the research into these drugs.
This year I finally started taking a biosimilar. Still extremely expensive. I don't have to pay for it, I sued the government to get it, here in Brazil. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon situation. Our constitution guarantees our right to health and the government's obligation to provide it.
I have been taking Humira for close to 7 years now. What disgusted me was not just the antics of AbbVie in patent protecting Humira, but how my brother (who works at AbbVie) began justifying their acrimonious practices.
Although, thankfully now there are a bunch of biosimilars coming onto the market, so we can expect to see further price decreases. For a manufacturing project, we contracted out a study recently on the market sizes (in USD) for a number of biosimilars under development. Humira is the only one that's predicted to have a market size reduction (by 40%!) because of how much AbbVie has been milking it.
As someone that worked in biotech/pharma for a decade, they LOVE to roll out the sick-people porn and talk about how we’re all making the world a better place…it helps them pay people less.
They can occasionally do some good things, but the large companies are no more ethical than Comcast. The small companies vary, but often have little real goals other than making the C-suite a few extra million no matter what.
The last small pharma I left discontinued all of their RNA sequencing experiments because they were worried about the data existing and it causing issues with FDA clearance down-the-line. Basically, don’t study it because it could show bad side-effects…but all of these PhD’s are making the world a better place, good job! Make sure to get married so you can afford a crappy townhome.
>What disgusted me was not just the antics of AbbVie in patent protecting Humira, but how my brother (who works at AbbVie) began justifying their acrimonious practices.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
> TITLE 8 SECTION II Article 196. Health is a right of all and a duty of the State and shall be guaranteed by means of social and economic policies aimed at reducing the risk of illness and other hazards and at the universal and equal access to actions and services for its promotion, protection and recovery.[1]
This year I finally started taking a biosimilar. Still extremely expensive. I don't have to pay for it, I sued the government to get it, here in Brazil. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon situation. Our constitution guarantees our right to health and the government's obligation to provide it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/20/1188745...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalimumab#Patent_litigation