[Ip-health] Bay Area News: Consumer groups battle Eshoo's (biogenerics) health care amendment

[Sarah Rimmington]

http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/localnews/ci_13472827

The Insider: Consumer groups battle Eshoo's health care amendment
San Mateo County Times/ BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
Posted: 10/02/2009 04:18:45 PM PDT
Updated: 10/02/2009 07:42:38 PM PDT

Consumer groups are still hoping to persuade Congress during this
month's health care reform negotiations to make it easier to create
generic versions of drugs known as biologics.

Biologic drugs are created through biological, as opposed to chemical,
processes =97 researchers use plant and animal cells to grow new
molecules. They are far more complex than most chemically produced drugs
and much harder to duplicate. The top-selling biologics include cancer
drugs such as Avastin and several drugs used to treat rheumatoid
arthritis and anemia.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, authored an amendment, which was added to
the House version of the health care reform bill in July, that would
grant biotech firms a 12-year period of market exclusivity on biologics,
more than twice the 5-year period that other drugs receive. A similar
measure is in the works in the Senate.

Critics charge Eshoo with selling out the public on behalf of the
biotech industry, a powerful special interest on the Peninsula and a
major contributor to Eshoo's campaigns. Eshoo claims she's trying to
balance the interests of consumers and biotech companies, which spend
billions developing these drugs.

Sarah Rimmington, an attorney for consumer group Essential Action,
called Eshoo's amendment an "unjustified price gouge of the American
public." She said 12 years of market exclusivity is far too long and
called into question the pharmaceutical industry's claim that biologics
are far more expensive to produce than other kinds of drugs.

Rimmington also blasted a clause in the amendment that critics claim
would allow biotech companies to restart their 12-year window every time
they make minor adjustments to their drugs =97 combining two types of
drugs, for instance, or providing them in different doses =97 a process
known as "evergreening."

Consumer groups were recently joined in the biologics fight by student
groups, including the American Medical Student Association and
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. In a statement issued by
the student groups on Monday, Yale University medical student Sara
Crager said that, as a future biomedical researcher, "I want the fruits
of my research to be available as widely as possible as soon as possible."

Eshoo's office disputes the notion that biologics are no more expensive
to produce than other drugs. The 12-year window is based on the average
amount of time a biologic stays on the market before its patent expires,
staffers say.

If biotech companies sink billions into biologics research, only to see
generic versions, or biosimilars, appear on the market too quickly, they
will lose their incentive to do that research, slowing down the
development of potentially lifesaving drugs, proponents of the amendment
argue.

For more of the Insider, visit www.ibabuzz.com/insider.

--
Sarah Rimmington
Attorney
Essential Action, Access to Medicines Project
Washington, DC
Tel: +1 (202) 387-8030
Cell: +1 (202) 422-2687
www.essentialaction.org/access/

Follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/sarahrimmington