Week 31

My latest batch of Gilenya turned up on Monday. I can't believe it's been two months since my last delivery in February. Mind you, the weather we've had in the UK of late could easily lead you into the false belief that it is still February. We've had snow on and off since the end of November - and it's bloody April!! It has turned though, and spring is finally here. They reckon it will be 18 degrees celsius at the weekend in Essex.

There's been a bit about Tecfidera or dimethyl fumarate ( lets just call it BG12, shall we?) in the press recently. Apparently it is going to cost about $55,000 per annum. That's US dollars, so I make that about £35,000 in English money - At this point in time, I need to point out that my mental arithmetic is crap, but that's not MY fault...

Back to money. According to my maths BG12 is going to be over twice as expensive as Gilenya. The same with Tysabri, come to think of it. Why is that? Don't ask me, but if you did, I would tell you that I assume that there is less risk involved and the company that developed the drug (Biogen) are using this fact to blackmail our primary care trusts (PCT) into paying massively inflated fees for drugs with a better safety record. The problem with this is that the PCT's governing bodies won't 'play ball' and and life changing medication won't be adopted as it isn't cost effective. The loser here is obviously the patient, as per

Call me an old socialist if you like, but I believe that profit making organisations shouldn't be involved in the process of researching and producing new medicine. Our Governments should take control of this, but unfortunately we need a time machine to go back 50 years to when services were in the public domain and they hadn't realised it was cost effective to outsource various services to private corporations. Anyway, I thought BG12 worked in a similar way to Gilenya and Tysabri. Eg, it stops the white blood cells (immune system) getting past the lymph nodes and into the nervous system, therefore proposing a risk to people that are positive with JC virus. I probably should make more of an effort and do a bit of research on the stuff I write about on here, but that is far too organised for me. I will find out about how BG12 works and get back to you... one day.

Enjoy your weekend,

Dan

Ps,
I just had a look on Wikipedia, and it says that BG12 is NOT an immunosuppressent. That means you've just wasted five minutes of your life reading this blog, sorry.