Bird Flu Mania

NOTE: Last night I wrote a much better article in the same vein as below, but then my aging computer had a minor stroke causing me to lose that post. It was really good.

It's time for me to push the potassium iodide (for that impending nuclear attack) aside in my bathroom and make room for flu masks and Tamiflu.

From what I have heard, I'm as good as dead from bird flu. Western Europe is the next stop, and obviously this thing is going to mutate into a human-to-human transferable disease. Just great; and top of this all, Roche, the makers of the best medicine against this mutant disease want us all to die because they didn't want to allow other companies to profit from their propriety medication. Hmm, freaking Swiss, first they hide Nazi gold and now this...

This all got me thinking; Roche owns the rights to make this stuff. The generics don't. Why should Roche turn over the rights to a product that they paid good money for (apparently they didn't develop it) and own the patent for? Why should Dr. Reddy or Barr Labs make a lot of money off of this? Because the world is panicking? Can Roche make enough to protect the whole world? Has anyone asked this question or are all the TV talking heads just sheep running around scared because there may be a wolf in the woods?

This is a public health issue; we can't have millions of people dying because Roche refuses to license the rights to these products, but really, where the hell where all the other companies when they were developing anti-flu medicine? Hey Cipla wants to sell an anti-bird flu pill or shot - great, get your R&D teams the money necessary and start slaving away; these things don't develop themselves over night. Naw, it's probably better business to wait for these crises to pop up, there is no development costs, your stock price is going to shoot up because you're making generic Tamiflu and best of all Roche gets screwed.

If Roche does license the rights to this, I hope the agreement is that the generic that makes it doesn't get one penny of profit from it - they can recoup their costs and that's it. If they really believe the crap that they are spewing about it being for the good of mankind, they will do it for the good of mankind. The generics can't play the capitalism card only when they need to lay people off...

It's actually probably in Roche's best interests to license some of the production. They are going to have to build up a significant stockpile in case this does mutate; then if it doesn't they're going to be stuck holding a pretty big ball. By licensing it they will protect themselves from the event that this global hysteria fest is wrong.

Oh, and please, don't buy any Tamiflu from "Dr. Doctor" who sends you that nice email telling you that he can also sell you Vi@gra and Ci@lis. Really, don't.