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20 - MANCHESTER HERALD. Sat., Jan. 15, 1983 }■ BUSINESS ^A/nens designet \Cournoyer always Dedicated fund] IManchesfer housel aspired to coach support grows Drug companies lobby for higher prices . page 11 . page 16 . page 7 spending for research and development has been in­ The major brand-name drug companies are lobbying Prescription drugs often have more commercial pa­ tent protection than other inventions. By pyramiding creasing annually. Critics of drug patent extension have hard and will lobby harder during the next congressional called the propo^ legislation “an unnecessary solution session for a bill that would extend the patent terms of product, use and process patents and using other legal strategies to extend monopoly life, drug companies to a nonexistent problem.” many prescription drugs. Your Says the National Council of Senior Citizens; The pa­ If the drug industry can push its bill through ^ e 1983 sometimes realize even more market exclusively'than Money's the statutory 17-year patent term. Valium, for Inst^ce, tent extension bill “would enable drug manufacturers to .Manchester, Conn. Congress, new prescription drugs will be protect^ from will have a 22-year monopoly. Aldomet has ^tent extend their monpolies, keOp drug prices high and pre­ Cold tonight generic drug competition for up to 24 years. During this protection for 22 years. \._ ^ vent generic drug ihanufacturers from pr^ucing the Monday, Jan. 17, 1983 extended monopoly, the drug companies will be able to Worth same drug at lower cost.” and Tuesday charge premium prices for their prescription medicines Even after all patents expire, brand-name drugs m'ay Sylvia Porter continue to enjoy their monopoly power without having Single copy 25c — and consumers, meaning you, will have no choice but — See page 2 to lower prices. Librium, for example, had been off pa­ Adds the American Association of Retired Persons:. to pay the higher prices. Mmlb tent for three years in 19^, but still commanded 90 per­ The extension “will result in very real income transfers The elderly, who aleady pay 25 percent of the nation's from elderly consumers to large brand-name manufac­ drug bill, will be hurt the most by drug patent extension. cent of the market at a price 15 times greater than the lowest-cost generic equivalent. turers.” An astounding 75 percent of drug misuse among the These groups and organized labor representatives elderly is already due to underutilization, the American ventions from discovery to market. By the time an in­ can’t match the lobbying war chests of the Phar­ Association of Retired Persons estimates, because they vention has been introduced, the study concluded, more 4) PHARMACEUTICAL innovaUon is declining. maceutical Manufacturers Association. can’t afford the medicine that has been prescribed. than two-thirds of its patent life was over. The drug companies pre counting ineffective drugs In a recent study, the Congressional Office of and drugs offering “little or no therapeutic gain” over No major traffic tie-ups reported THE MAJOR DRUG companies have told Congress Technological Assessment also reported that “although products alredy on the market, reports the Goneric AS ALWAYS, whether you can offset the drug patent that they are not getting the full benefit of the 17-year the patent term in the U.S. is 17 years, the period during Pharmaceutical Industry Association. Since Congress extension and fight for yourself will be up to you, the patent terms because burdensome government regula­ I the patent term in which products are marketed is required in 1962 that prescription drugs must be effec­ consumer. Meanwhile: tion had severely shortened the monopoly life of their usually less than 17 years because patents are obtained • When you buy medicines, part of the price you pay products, reducing the drug industiV’s incentive to in­ tive as well as safe, there has been no decline in innova­ before pnxlucts are ready to be marketed.” tion, and the approval of drugs offering “Important or goes for industry lobbyists. vest in research and causing a decline in phar­ • When you pay taxes, you must pay more taxes mere­ 2) BURDENSOME GOVERNMENT regulation is modest therapeutic gain” has remained constant over maceutical innovation. these 20 years. The number of new chemimcal entities ly to make up for the fact that the drug industry can Town weathers storm with The industry wants Congress to “restore" that part of responsible for lost time. approved for marketing in 1981 was the highest number deduct the cost of lobbying as an “ordinary and the patent term that has been “lost” to government ^ ile proving that drugs are safe and effective may necessary” business expense. not always be easy and shouldn’t be, government in any single year since 1962. The drug research pipeline regulations requiring that they prove drugs safe and is reported so ft'I that Wall Street ha^dubbed the 1960s No one but you can submit the consumer viewpoint on By Paul Hendrie effective before putting them on the market. It's not regulations requiring this are certainly necessary and this issue. Herald Reporter fair, the industry says, for a Rubik's Cube to receive cannot be fairly called burdensome. If the .deregulators “the^golden era” of new drug introductions. more protection from competition than a prescription abolished the Food and Drug Administration tomorrow, (Save money as you organize your budget with Manchester seemed to weather drug. drug testing for safety and efficiency would continue if 5) INCENTIVES TO INVEST in research have been “Sylvia Porter’s Financial Almanac for 1983” — a func­ the 11 Mi-inch snowfall this weekend Are these claims valid? Here are some only to avoid product liability suits. slashed. tional and informative desk calendar/handhook with relative ease compared with counter arguments. The U.S. drug industry has long been considered one featuring Porter’s best budgeting tips and money-saving other areas of the sUte that suffered When commercial patent life has been lost, the cause of the most profitable of all manufacturing industries— advice. Regularly $8.95, now just $4.95 to readers of this power outages, blocked roads and 1) THE BETTER mousetrap theory. is more likely to be a company’s own delay between with the after-tax rate of return on shareholders’ equity column. Send $4.95 plus $1 for mailing'and handling to Few inventions have a full 17 years of market protec­ storm-relat^ deaths. filing a patent and starting testing. exceeding the average rate of return for all manufac­ Financial Almanac in care of the Manchester Herald, The storm was b lam ^ for at least tion. A study for a Senate antitrust committee of 35 key 4400 Johnson Drive, Fairway, Kan. 66205. Make checks ,3) DRUG MONOPOLY life has been severely turing. Even without the tax credit Congress voted last five deaths in Connecticut, including inventions, including the television and the jet engine, year to stimulate American Innovation, drug industry payable to Universal Press Syndicate.) found that it took innovators 11.6 years to bring their in- shortened. that of John Sullivan of Avon, the deputy commissioner of Bureau of 1 / r XMIRICAM sJB fS Aeronautics of the state Depart­ ‘ NATIONAL ment of Transportation, United "'IjANClAl %M N IN O r-in b rief Survey: U.S. Press International reported. N fIN Sullivan, 67, apparently suffered a heart attack from overexertion while shoveling snow, as did a Meeting set number of other people in the state. workers are However, nobody was admitted to HARTFORD — The Southern New England Sec­ the Manchester Memorial Hospital tion of the Society of Automotive Engineers will emergency room with heart attacks host a dinner meeting at the Civic Center's Holiday or similar emergencies, said Inn Wednesday to give a Japanese engineer an op­ poorly trained hospital spokesman Andrew Beck. portunity to explain how the Japanese railway Beck said there were some injuries transportation system has been able to operate 275 NEW YORK (UPI) — The American work force is this weekend because of traffic ac­ trains per day, at speeds up to 210 kilometers per flooded with poorly educated workers, including cidents, but that it was impossible to hour, accident free, for 17 years. tell which accidents were caused by managers and supervisors, who can’t read, write, orjadd Ichiroh Mitsui, a 1955 graduate of Tokyo Univer­ the storm and which were not. well enough to accomplish basic tasks, a business sur­ sity School of Electrical Engineering, now senior Several medical emergencies — vey indicates. , deputy director of Japanese National Railways and 'Three-quarters Of the corporations responding to a with patients suffering chest pains JNR's Washington representative, serving as an and difficulty breathing — were survey on basic skills of American workers said they ..H’ advisor for the Northeast Corridor Project, will are spending money on remedial training for their reported in Tolland County. speak. Mitsui also will discuss the development of employees, the study released Thursday showed. •I TOWN HIGHWAY Superinten­ roadbeds, rails, wheels and suspension systems. “ Businesses may lose millions of doUafs annually ^ TRAFFIC; StRUQQLED TO MAKE IT UP THE HILL ON CENTER STREET The meeting is open to the general public as well dent Robert D. Harrison said snow because their employees cannot read, write, or add well clearance crews hit the roads by . some of the roads In town still are quite slippery as to all SAE members. For resehration informa­ enough to handle basic tasks,” said the Center for tion, contact J.J. Wesbecher, 18 Marilyn Drive, 7:30 Saturday morning, to begin Public Resources, a non-profit organization that con­ chemical routes. Full plowing began Glastonbury. out early Saturday morning and ducted the survey.

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