Monopolies of life saving drugs and world’s neglected diseases
Introduction and backgrounds
In the world, there are a lot of monopolies of necessities situations existing. Among them, the most important and serious one is the monopolies for life saving drugs. People who have rare diseases have had not much research attention, it is because their numbers are small and the supply and demand market for drugs to treatment is also small. A rare disease occurs in less than 200,000 individuals in the United States, or less than 5 per 10,000 individuals in the European Union (Mary, 2008). Since 1983, the congress of the Orphan Drug law has allowed the companies to own a seven-year monopoly for bringing a new treatment for a rare disease to the market. Marion Finkel, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Office of New Drug Evaluation said the Orphan drug law was aimed to make products available for patients who had rare diseases. The 1979 report wrote these treatments as “significant Drugs of Limited Commercial Value”. Marion Finkel also explained they did not refer to earn money at the beginning. However, with more and more orphan drugs are protected by the law, and there is almost no competition for many orphan drugs because of the high trial fee to get FDA approval, a lot of drug companies get the monopolies and raise the prices. As a result, the poor people have rare diseases, especially a lot of developing countries poor people cannot afford the high prices. They just die as the sacrifice of the maximizing profit, because drug companies ignore the poor group and pay attention to rich who can give them enough money.
Also, there are more than a third of the world’s population cannot get the essential medications. Dr. Peter Hotez started to research the vaccine to fight against the Manson’s Tropical Diseases since he was 13-year-old. However, when he looked for companies to support the vaccine test, he failed. At last, Hotez felt
In the world, there are a lot of monopolies of necessities situations existing. Among them, the most important and serious one is the monopolies for life saving drugs. People who have rare diseases have had not much research attention, it is because their numbers are small and the supply and demand market for drugs to treatment is also small. A rare disease occurs in less than 200,000 individuals in the United States, or less than 5 per 10,000 individuals in the European Union (Mary, 2008). Since 1983, the congress of the Orphan Drug law has allowed the companies to own a seven-year monopoly for bringing a new treatment for a rare disease to the market. Marion Finkel, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Office of New Drug Evaluation said the Orphan drug law was aimed to make products available for patients who had rare diseases. The 1979 report wrote these treatments as “significant Drugs of Limited Commercial Value”. Marion Finkel also explained they did not refer to earn money at the beginning. However, with more and more orphan drugs are protected by the law, and there is almost no competition for many orphan drugs because of the high trial fee to get FDA approval, a lot of drug companies get the monopolies and raise the prices. As a result, the poor people have rare diseases, especially a lot of developing countries poor people cannot afford the high prices. They just die as the sacrifice of the maximizing profit, because drug companies ignore the poor group and pay attention to rich who can give them enough money.
Also, there are more than a third of the world’s population cannot get the essential medications. Dr. Peter Hotez started to research the vaccine to fight against the Manson’s Tropical Diseases since he was 13-year-old. However, when he looked for companies to support the vaccine test, he failed. At last, Hotez felt