

World backs India against ‘bully’ US - koolhead17
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/World-backs-India-against-bully-US/articleshow/46007104.cms

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melling
Isn't all the cost in developing the first pill? It's sort of like software.
Sure, it's easy to make millions of copies after you spend the years of work
and millions/billions of dollars. Yes, India has hundreds of millions of poor
people. Wouldn't it be beneficial if it developed new drugs to help their
citizens and sell them with the world? I imagine India could become Big Pharma
of the 21st Century.

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benrapscallion
(I was born and raised in India, now involved in biomed research in US). This
is absolutely and completely correct. For every compound that makes to the
clinic, there are 1000s that fail at the preclinical or clinical stages: worst
case in Phase III when 100s of millions of dollars have already been spent on
it. India, in its shortsighted view, is refusing to acknowledge the effort and
money that goes into bringing a molecule to the clinic. India is notoriously
shortsighted when it comes to biomedical research. Here's a classic example:
In response to a Texas company that tried to patent an indigenous Basmati
species under the name Texmati, the govt imposed a blanket ban on the export
of any indigenous DNA outside. What is the result of that? When the global
HAPMAP projects began to genotype humans of all races and ethnicity and trace
human history, Indians couldn't be genotyped because of the (Texmati) DNA law.
HAPMAP ended up recruiting Indians living in US and UK. Now when the world is
starting to reap some of the benefits of HAPMAP, India is at the forefront
criticizing "bullies" like the US for not paying attention to diseases with
restricted incidence in, say, India.

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IndianAstronaut
The Texmati issue though was one thing that caused India to dig its heels in.
Trying to patent something indegenous posed a major threat.

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brainy
dont no why the world (EURO) does not see that US is a big bully to other
nations.

