The pharmaceutical industry is multi billion dollar industry which has brought us huge advances and improved the quality of life for so many of us. Just the same, it is driven by the rules of capitalism that it operates within. In this environment, many promising treatments which are unfortunately not patentable, are ignored and relegated to the back pages of some academic journal. To get a drug approved by the FDA often runs near billions of dollars, thus without patent protection, the drug company has no way of recouping its investment.
In the 1980’s a similar issue faced our health care system whereby ‘Orphan Diseases’ – that is a disease which effects less than 200,000 people – were horribly underserviced by our pharmaceutical companies. Through a series of incentives including extended patent protection, the Orphan Drug Act, introduced in 1983 the number of drugs to address Orphan Diseases has increased dramatically. Before 1983, 38 drugs were approved in this category and since 1983 to 2004 1129 drugs have been approved.
An opportunity exists to dovetail new legislation on to the Orphan Drug Act to cover drugs which are not patentable. While the new legislation cannot offer patent protection for a non patentable drug, it can provide exclusive right of production along with tax and business inline with the existing Orphan Drug Act. An example of a drug which could benefit from such legislation is Dichloroacetic Acid (DCA) which dramatically and rapidly decreased tumours in mice across a wide spectrum of cancers. Since then there has been a mountain of anecdotal evidence of success in humans where patients have chosen to self medicate. The pharmaceutical company that wins the bid to perform full clinical trials on DCA would be granted exclusive right of production and moreover, provide doctors and patients with necessary dosing and safety information which is currently lacking.
I’m in late stage NSCLC lung cancer and I just started taking DCA. I’m struggling a little with dose calculations but I’m trying a 25mg per kilo start daily. The daily is where I’m not sure of. I’ve yet to experience any effects at all but I literally just started. I would support any government or private support to determine efficacy of DCA. The FDA in the USA hasn’t been helpful at all. They only support Pharma and their regulations are the main reason all drugs cost so much or are banned from the start. Most FDA board members are ex pharma employees so that shouldn’t be allowed at all. The non profits like the American cancer society are worthless as the stifle anything that cant make money. I recently went through all the conventional treatments including chemo/radiation/opdivo and all failed. I was encouraged at first with promises that many immunotherapy drugs would be on the market soon in case Opdivo failed. well 8 months later there are no studies related to my situation (DNA PROFILE CYLD)and I get worse everyday. With billions of dollars being poured into research why isn’t there a trial for this immunotherapy option? also vaccines have proved effective in trials. yet non are available to me. We constantly are hearing about breakthroughs in this area of cancer treatment yet zip when I inquired with treatment centers. The FDA is as corrupt as any organization and it constantly gets away with it. meanwhile 150,000 a year die from lung cancer alone. Common sense needs to rule the FDA and nothing else. empower them to allow almost any treatment when one has a death sentence anyway. Why in Gods name not? what can happen? A death?
Have you spoken with Medicor Cancer? http://medicorcancer.com/