Make no mistake, if done correctly Labour's stated policy on pharmaceuticals and private research funding is a step that would transform the costs of the NHS and stop the profiteering and stranglehold that the private sector has on medicine.
Private pharmaceuticals company make billions out of NHS spending, often on products that have been researched at least partly funded by UK state funding. It is a completely inequitable situation and it needs to change.
The patent period is used to maximize profits. I constantly hear the argument that the development overheads are so high that the pharmaceuticals industry needs 25 years of gouging to make it worth it, but the vast profits of the indicate otherwise.
Any research that is funded by the UK State should result in the UK State owning a share of the patent. There should be international law that establishes that ANY vital medication can become public domain if there is a critical health need.
We also need this because modern medicine it too focused on finding the next chemical sticking plaster with incremental improvements before the last patent runs out rather that actual prevention of conditions. Look at mental health medicine. It is all about treating the symptoms
One area where the USSR wiped the floor with western medicine was in the sanitation on their wards. Without the profit driven model of pharmaceuticals, instead of trying to sanitize their wards with an arms race of antibacterial agents, they realized there was a cheap alternative
They realized that every time a new pathogen appeared in their wards, there was something that would in turn be living off of that. So they started gathering effluent leaving the hospitals and analysing to find the current new pathogan...
When they found that pathogen, they looked for what was living off of it, and then they grew a load of that thing and sprayed it all over the wards. As a result they maintained sanitation with a tailored in house department and there was a target elimination of the pathogen.
That meant it was less likely to create overly sanitized environments that broad brush agents create, avoiding environments where there was little competition where agent resistant but otherwise insignificant pathogens woul get a chance to thrive.
And they did it all without any intervention from the pharmaceutical industry, with no significant development costs, just great lab work and culturing. The costs were minimal but it solved the problem and did not create many new problems.
The pharmaceuticals industry is designed to sustain itself, not fix things. That has an impact on the NHS. I have a chronic condition where I can not absorb Vitamin D. For years this was undiagnosed and I has problems with my mental health.
I was only ever offered anti-depressants to deal with symptom. It took 12 years for the problem to be identified and even then it was not accepted that it caused the mental health problem until I demonstrated how taking it was tallying with my symptoms reducing.
I was fortunate that I got a good doctor that was ready to waive through every test I wanted, and that she managed to refer me to a specialist who told me how they have noticed a trend in very fair skinned people who seem to have this problem with retaining Vitamin D.
Low Vitamin D causing parathyroid hormone levels to elevate. High parathyroid hormone causes feels of anxiety and can lead to patterns in life and thinking that causes depression. The NHS tried to offer me treatments for the symptoms rather than find the simple underlying cause.
If I had not been exceptional in my determination to get an actual resolution to my problem I may never have been diagnosed correctly. If I had accepted the suggested drugs the pharmaceuticals industry would have made a fortune out of blanking out the symptoms rather than curing.
But Vitamin D is generic (although I would only use Fultium D, which is an excellent grade of product) and you can not make a fortune on marketing Vitamin D or hold NICE to ransom on it.
I have a life long need to have vitamin D supplementation. For several years I would get it on prescription. Then at the end of last year my prescription was refused. Regional NHS bodies have been advised to not allow vitamin D prescriptions, even in my case with a medical need.
This caused a problem because my dose is prescription only in the UK, so I had to order from France before I found Internis do a half dose that seems to be a similar grade as my full dose. Most over the counter Vitamin D supplements are a terrible grade and do not work for me.
So we are at the stage were my treatment that prevents a range of conditions, including a serious anxiety issue with medical cause, is not available on the NHS, but they would be quite happy to dish out anti-depressents that fix nothing like they are Smarties.
This is a key problem of our NHS. In a climate where that is increasing mental health problems, nobody seems to be asking what is causing it & if there are any straight forward solutions. Instead they just want to fund pharmaceutical companies making profitable sticking plasters.
