European Executive Vice- President Margrethe Vestager speaks during a media conference regarding an antitrust case at EU headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, Nov. 26, 2020. The European Union has fined two pharmaceutical companies for colluding to keep a cheap alternative to a sleep disorder medicine off the market for their profit and at the expense of patients. (Johanna Geron, Pool via AP)
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union has fined two pharmaceutical companies for colluding to keep a cheap alternative to a sleep disorder medicine off the market for their profit and at the expense of patients.
EU antitrust commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said that Teva pharmaceuticals and Cephalon, a company it later acquired, must pay 60.5 million euros ($72 million) for agreeing between themselves to delay for years the launch of Teva’s cheaper version of Cephalon’s blockbuster Modafinil. In return for the delay, Teva got beneficial side deals and some payments.
Vestager said that “Teva’s and Cephalon’s pay-for-delay agreement harmed patients and national health systems, depriving them of more affordable medicines.”
Modafinil treats excessive daytime sleepiness and under the brand name Provigil it accounted for more than 40% of Cephalon’s turnover. A cheap alternative would have had a serious impact on the company, and the EU argued that Cephalon enticed Teva in 2005 to stay out of its market. In 2011, Teva acquired Cephalon.
Teva said in a statement that it maintained its innocence. “We continue to believe the modafinil patent settlement agreement did not infringe EU competition law in relation to the principles” laid out by the EU’s court of justice. “We are planning to file an appeal.”
psikhasozdatel on November 26th, 2020 at 23:38 UTC »
I have a diagnosed primary hypersomnia. Modafinil is the drug I’ve been prescribed for some time, and it has essentially saved my life.
People don’t really quite understand what life with a primary hypersomnia is like, because we don’t really have meaningful words to describe the sensations (as primary hypersomnias are relatively rare). So, we just end saying things like “I’m so tired” and “I can’t stay awake”. These are things that most people have said at some point, and so they feel like they must understand what sufferers are feeling too.
It is not the same. Tired is not the right word. It is something different altogether.
Before I was medicated, I would sometimes sleep 20 hours a day. The few hours I was awake, life was really little more than a hazy blur of anxiety and panic. Your mind plays trick on you. You start hearing things. Some people start seeing things. The only thing that helps is sleep, but even it doesn’t really help — it just pauses your life so you don’t have to feel the misery. As soon as you wake up, the panic floods back in.
The ambient noises of life all merge together into one bizarre background “hum”, as your brain is too weak to process everything in real time. That’s the best subjective way I can describe it, anyway. Out of that background hum, your pattern recognition starts finding footsteps, doors, music and voices in the noise. Sometimes you snap back for a moment, and realize that you were listening to a song that wasn’t really playing. At my worst, this happened every now and then.
It feels like delirium. True delirium, not some sort of joke “I was so drunk bro, I was like, delirious”. Confusion at every turn. It was horrible, and it was absolutely destroying my life.
A diagnosis from a sleep doctor led to modafinil, and the first day I was on it, I cried. A lot. Suddenly I was back in the real world. I could study again. I could attend my lectures. I could tend, once again, to my hobbies. For the first time in almost a year, I felt alive. Waking up well rested... it’s indescribable.
There’s a catch, though. Modafinil is expensive. Where I live, the last time I picked up a a script it was roughly 250 USD for 30 x 200 mg pills. It’s frankly an atrocity.
For any in a similar situation, look into a substance called adrafinil. It is a prodrug to modafinil, meaning it is itself inactive, but it gets converted (adrafinil) into the active substance (modafinil) in your body. It is cheap, legal, and can be purchased online for a fraction of the cost of the prescription drug. Do your own research. This is not medical advice. But don’t let your life be stolen from you. Sometimes, we have to take things into our own hands. Adrafinil has kept me going in hard times, when money was not available. Maybe this can help someone else, too.
DocRockhead on November 26th, 2020 at 22:16 UTC »
Fines aren't punishment.
milkytunt on November 26th, 2020 at 21:08 UTC »
Scum.