Word: claritin
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...covered a single drug or two. But this year, watch for heavy lobbying for the granddaddy of all patent extenders. It would protect pharmaceutical company sales of $3 billion annually and add years to the profitable life of at least seven expensive drugs, such as Schering-Plough's Claritin for allergies and Eulexin for prostate cancer, SmithKline Beecham's Relafen for arthritis and G.D. Searle's Daypro for arthritis. The big losers: patients, especially senior citizens on fixed incomes, who must buy expensive prescription drugs instead of cheaper generic versions. Estimates of the added cost run from $1 billion...
What doesn't make sense is that one of Gore's senior advisers, top-tier lobbyist Peter Knight, is a hired gun for pharmaceuticals giant Schering-Plough, which is in a red-hot battle to stretch out its patent for the best-selling allergy medication Claritin beyond 2002. The New Jersey-based company paid Knight's firm $100,000 in the first half of this year alone...
...course, Schering-Plough would pay almost any amount of money to protect its exclusive right to sell Claritin, a drug that brings it more than $5 million in revenue a day. Claritin sales totaled $1.9 billion last year, and will balloon to $4 billion by 2002, according to a market analyst. To keep the money coming in, the company doubled its lobbying outlay starting in 1996 to more than $4 million in 1998. Among its other paid advocates: former Senator Dennis DeConcini; former Watergate assistant special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste; and Thomas Parry, former chief of staff for Senator Orrin...
Schering-Plough argues that additional patent years are only fair. Claritin was stuck in the Food and Drug Administration approval pipeline longer than many drugs, it claims, with the clock ticking on its 17-year patent. Schering-Plough also says Claritin profits help fund research for new drugs. But, its opponents counter, what about Claritin patients--who pay as much as $2.66 a dose instead of the 50[cents] or less they would pay, analysts figure, if a generic version of the drug were available? If the patent expires on time, according to a University of Minnesota study funded...
...moving the bill. Knight says he is closing down his firm to spend more time on the Gore campaign. But Schering-Plough is expected to continue the battle next year. If it loses again, the company has that contingency covered too: the FDA is currently considering its new super-Claritin for market approval. Its patent wouldn't expire until...