Actor urges push to speed therapies

By Associated Press | May 8, 2007
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...eed_therapies/

Actor Michael J. Fox appealed to scientists and investors yesterday to aggressively translate scientific research into creative treatments for debilitating diseases, including the Parkinson's disease he has fought for more than a decade.

Fox said grants from the National Institutes of Health have created a system that mainly encourages academic scientists to publish papers that yield academically interesting answers. But the system fails to translate the discoveries into treatments and cures.

Nor do pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have an appetite for high-risk studies critical in determining whether creative ideas could yield therapies for the 20,000 human diseases that have no cure, Fox said. They are more interested in repackaging old ideas and compounds in an effort to continue reaping vast returns.

"Levodopa is the gold-standard treatment for Parkinson's . . . But it's a little frustrating that the best drug we've got is one that's been around for 40 years. 40 years!" Fox said at the BIO International Convention, a four-day event in Boston expected to attract more than 20,000 researchers, investors, activists, and others.

"But, hey, credit where credit is due -- I couldn't be happier about the recent advances. What comes to mind is antidepressants for dogs, which makes it a little easier for me because my dog is feeling better," said Fox, who either put one hand in his pocket or gripped the podium to control visible symptoms of his disease.

Fox noted government and commercial investments in medical research pump more than $100 billion a year into the expensive and tricky search for new drugs, and there is much talk about finding more sources of finances.

"I'd argue that filling the unmet needs of patients across all diseases isn't about more money -- it's about spending the money more effectively," he said.

He called on individuals, whom he said provide an additional couple of billions of dollars in private philanthropists capital to medical research, to raise their own bar of giving -- saying "the grateful patient syndrome" does not help to encourage the development of new therapies.

"We are failing to incent the high-risk innovators who could really make a significant difference more quickly," he said.

Fox, 45, who starred on TV's "Family Ties" and "Spin City" as well as the "Back to the Future" films, was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991 and revealed his condition publicly in 1998.

In 2000, he quit full-time acting because of his symptoms and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Last year, his foundation committed $7.5 million across seven grant programs to 16 companies, and the number is expected to grow this year.

if we want a private doctor to lets say, give us a transplant of our own stem cells, who are they to say, NO!

I was told this was a free country, free decisions made by -we the people.
They have the right to die laws in Oregon and all of us according to the US Contitution have the right to life, liberty and to pursue this goal,

Did we lose our rights or does it just look good on paper?

The pharmaceutical industry could not exist in its present form were it not for two major deviations from the ideal "free" market, first, the exclusine monoply rights granted by patents; and second, the ability to practice price discrimination of drug resale (rules that officially prohibit cheaper Canadian drugs from being re-inported back to the states.)

"The pharmaceutical industry earns nearly two-thirds of its profits in the United States since drug prices in the rest of the industrialized world are largely government controlled. Those profits rely almost entirely on laws that protect the industry from cheap imports, delay home-grown kickoffs, give away government medicall discoveries, allow steep tax breaks for research expenditures and forbid government officials from demanding discounts while requiring them to buy certain drugs."
Gardiner Harris in the New York Times"

"You just don't get it ... We've got more money than God!" Phillip Morris Executive

"If we put horse manure in a capsule, we could sell it to 95% of these doctors." "Pills are to sell, not to take." Harry Loynd, President of Parke Davis, 1951-1967

In the early 1950's when Dr. Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, he was asked why he had not tried to patent this lifesaving discovery, which surely could have made an immense fortune. Salk appeared startled at the question and replied, "How can you patent the sun?" His answer precisely captured one mindset about these matters -- First, that a responsible medical scientist would not seek to make personal profit off a discovery; and second, that there were some areas of medicine and of nature that were simply off limits for patents and private ownership.

I beleive genetics should have that same mindset. All of the above came from a book I am reading by Howard Brody, Director for Medical Humanities at Texas University called "Ethics, the Medical Profession, and the Pharmaceutical Industry -- Hooked All of you should get this book. It's very interesting and enlightening. You can order it online at www.rowmanlittlefield.com

Vicky

Vicky,
Thanks for your post especially the quote from Dr Jonas Salk. I was fortunate to meet him at the Salk Institute when my husband was working there. At that time, Dr. Salk was working on AIDs vaccine and was troubled by the direction medical research was going i.e profits before people. He talked about open patents for public use. This was in early 90s. Anyone with more info on open patents for public use?

Girija

After I was raised as a little college grad, I then went into post grad education to make me more "marketable". I then went out into the bigpaharm world and was going to cure "Something". I had faith in them. The team. But just like that movie "The Firm", I slowly realized that there would be no practical application to my best thought out plans, only resistence. I was not there to help "cure" anything. I could never understand why all the good ideas whithered on the vine.
I think that MJF saw this light too, when he saw "good work" from his "people", but nothing tangible ever coming from it. Why? what was/is going on? Money, that's what's going on. In the halls of research, the idea is to produce science, just make products that only marginally "useful" to the world, all the while making good researchers "just do there jobs" and "be productive". IT has been noticed by many on this board that the years go by with nothng being resolved. The world makes it's living from the labors of young healthy people, who only care about how large their paycheck is this month. I have given up trying to understand why we see the end of our suffering delayed to the point of hopelessness for many of us. THe stem cell debates have been burning for decades now. WE've seen this as an impediment to the search for a cure. WE even have seen remarkably promising procedures like GDNF infusion get tossed into the garbage can. We've seen nothing really new and effective come our way. If i sound defeated, it's because I am.
IT's easier to be hopeful at the start of PD, when dopa works well and you feel like PD is only "bothersome", not an all pervading, life destroying, horrible condition, where one welcomes a reprieve from it and it's ugly menacing tentacles that destroy ourselves , our families, and the immense human will to survive.
PD is as bad as cancer, AIDS or any of the other diseases that slowly consume the human spirit. I'll stop now, with my apologies to those who still have fight left in them. cs

I have to say it hurts my heart, that you are hurting, and we have all seen
our hope -slide by, put on hold for five years at a time, but I know your intentions as a chemist were pure, and if things were to be realized -
the lives of people are the diamonds.
dreams should not be seeing how much money you can steal from people keeping them on palliative medicines...

rewards will be based on the love system
not the Gold standard.