Drug companies will alter existing drug compounds very slightly to extend patent life
Developing a drug that might make a real difference for patients is financially risky. The smarter play for exec bonuses and shareholder dividends is to fiddle slightly with existing compounds—just enough to make them patent-ready lookalikes of compounds already on the gravy train. Companies can double the life of their monopoly patent protection by making the most trivial of changes—turning a right-handed drug to a left-handed one that has identical effects or changing slightly the duration of action.
References
- Frances, Allen. (2013). Saving Normal CHAPTER 3. Diagnostic Inflation (p. 129). New York, NY: HarperCollins.