Research Library

Drug companies that bypass distributors and offer generics directly to patients, like the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, could disrupt the pharmaceutical supply chain and ultimately save thousands of lives.

Baker Institute health policy experts provide links to some of the sources they found helpful in understanding developments in the coronavirus outbreak.

High cancer drug prices reduce access to therapy, cause treatment abandonment and financial bankruptcies, as well as severe emotional and family distress.

In physics, extensive collaborations, access to colleagues’ data and rigorous peer review make it extremely difficult for individual researchers to bend the rules. Furthermore, physics does not harbor the types of ethical minefields characteristic of the biosciences. No thorny questions arise pertaining to human or animal life, nor do physicists commonly grapple with the ethical haze of intellectual property when patents and money are at stake. Things seem to be black and white in physics. But are they?

Cancer drug shortages are almost uniquely associated with generic drugs (small profit margins) and rarely with patented drugs (large profit margins). They are common in the U.S., but uncommon in Europe and elsewhere, where generic drug prices are on average higher than in the U.S. This suggests the main cause of drug shortages is economic.

In a recent commentary, Baker Institute science and technology policy experts described two international court cases that aimed to define “research” — and that ultimately arrived at two different answers. “What makes this interesting is that the courts’ definition of ‘research’ was based on politics — what the court wanted the end result to be,” said Kirstin Matthews, the institute’s fellow in science and technology policy. To reach a decision prohibiting human embryonic stem cell (hESC) patents, the EU court ruled that “research” occurs in a continuum. To reach a decision supporting federal funding of stem cell research, the U.S. court ruled that “research” involves a specific project.