
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 12, 1994                   TAG: 9407130064
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

TAX-FUNDED DRUGS DEAR

Americans can pay many times more for medicines developed with tax dollars than for industry-funded drugs, and the government can't help because it has lost track of its own research, federal and other critics told Congress Monday.

The median wholesale price for company-financed drugs was $1,626, while taxpayer-funded drugs cost $4,854, said James Love of the Taxpayer Assets Project, a consumer group. In both cases, the figures represent the cost for a year's supply or medicine or for the usual course of treatment if shorter than a year.

Taxol, the breast cancer drug discovered by the National Institutes of Health, costs 25 cents a milligram but is sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $4.87 per milligram. Levamisole, into which NIH poured $11 million, costs $6 a pill to treat colon cancer, but 6 cents a pill to deworm sheep, Love said.

``We're going to shake the system up,'' Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., promised after hearing reports that the government isn't safeguarding taxpayers' investments in medical research.

By law, the government has rights to any drug or medical device developed with tax dollars. Among other things, it can revoke a patent that's not used in the public interest or even license a product to a competitor if it's priced too high.

Such steps can work: The government's threat to step in when the AIDS drug AZT hit the market halved its price.

But to intervene it must prove federal research was used - and NIH has lost track, says a Health and Human Services inspector general's report.

NIH allows outside scientists to voluntarily report inventions resulting from the almost $8 billion in grants it awards annually and has only one employee to ensure researchers comply, the probe concluded.

``NIH needs to do a better job,'' Assistant Inspector General Michael Hill told Wyden's House Small Business regulation subcommittee Monday.``One person is watchdogging this $8 billion program? Unbelievable,'' Wyden said.

The agency now has two people on the job and hopes to improve the program by allowing scientists to report inventions more easily, via computer, said Dr. Wendy Baldwin, NIH deputy director.

That's not enough, Wyden said. Scientists should be required to say, under oath, on patent applications whether tax dollars were used, suggested Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo.

Other critics called for an NIH audit, revoking patents from scientists who don't report overlooked inventions during a grace period.

But that won't help consumers, because NIH doesn't demand that prices on taxpayer-developed drugs be low, Love said.

Love's consumer group found that only 17 significant new drugs for severe illnesses were discovered and licensed in the United States from 1987 to1991, and 12 were taxpayer funded. Of the 37 cancer drugs approved since 1955, 34 were tax funded.

``There has got to be some sort of commensurate recognition of the taxpayers' investment when those drugs are priced,'' Wyden said. ``What we're looking at is, what's the best way to do that?''

by CNB