It’s good to be back POQing again after a small hiatus – nothing like a good POQ to get back into the swing of things.

The biggest news on the international pharmacy front seems to be the highly covered and sizzling situation boiling over in the province of Ontario in that giant country all tucked away up in the northerly direction of the States. That’s right, new legislation in the normally subdued and mild-mannered Canada has got both sides SEETHING with contempt on who will be to blame for what is expected to be the demise of independent pharmacy and to the fate of the pharmacy institution as a whole.

As was covered in one of the country’s most far reaching papers, The National Post, as well as numerous other hard copy and online news magazines (see here Macleans), the Ontario government as set in motion legislation that will put a cap on the allowable amount charged for generic medicines, that is pharmacies can now charge at maximum 25% of the brand name costs. The decision comes after literally years of budget review on how to decrease the annual millions spent by the government on drug costs – Ontario is the second largest medicines payer in North America and pays for medicines for seniors, the poor and many other social sectors. It should be noted, however,  that this legislation also limits the selling price to private payers, that is insurance companies or patients themselves.

The result, as it seems, is that Ontario pharmacies will suffer huge losses in revue, revenue that is used to staff pharmacists in the extensive hours that are now the norm and for services such as patient counselling, pill packs, and general pharmacy services that have come to be the norm, as it appears that pharmacies in this province gain significant revenues from increases in generic medicines sell-price as well as supplementation from the generic companies themselves for stocking certain products (read the full explanation in the Macleans article here).

OK, we all know there is a global economic crises but as a once-practicing pharmacist I am appalled by what I read in the Maclean’s article, MAINLY that these budget-cutting decisions were made by a politician who is NOT a pharmacist. What I find equally appalling is the unbreakable bond that societies and governments continue to make between the product of medicines and the practice of pharmacy – nowhere in this new legislation, it seems, were payment of patient services considered, public health influence or communicative aspects of the profession. It was merely the drugs, and that’s it. Are we still just the pill-pushers?  *shudder*

But, those recently mentioned services are what will be chopped from the pharmacy block when revenues dip, pharmacies cannot staff a sufficient amount of pharmacists nor stay open long hours. What the government failed to consider is that a large portion of those revenues went to subsidise these patient-centred services – are pharmacists expected to do it for free?

In my mind, this appears to be a huge step back for the profession in a country that is known for respectable and universal healthcare. I can’t pretend to know all the details but if I were a practitioner in an Ontario pharmacy, I’d be up in arms.

A very interesting twist in legislation just happened in the US, one that will definitely set a precedent in the foreseen lengthy race between science and technology and the law.

Once again we have our friends at Wired to thank for bring us the story. As they so eloquently put it:  “When you went to sleep last Sunday night, 20 percent of your genome belonged to a researcher or company. One day later, following federal district court judge Robert Sweet’s ruling, it belonged to you”.

What has happened is that Federal Government in the US has put a ban on gene patents. That is, those companies that have invested billions of dollars sequencing certain sections of the human genome for drug/treatment development can no longer claim them under patent (and, therefore, hold a monopoly on studying that portion of the genome).

Although I honestly sympathise for the drug companies, in this particular case one called Myriad (even the National Public Radio was following the story…good times…) I more strongly lead towards Wired (and the general, common-sense equipped public) in that it is absurd to allow gene patents – no one created them, we have just discovered them. It’s like patenting a bad ex boyfriend – we feel like we are owed something for the years we spent trying to figure them out, yet can claim no proprietal rights. (Thankfully?).

So, now what? Some feal that this could cause competition within the biotech industry, resulting in a boon for patients. I myself think this is secondary and agree with another sector in that the focus must now be on using these gene discoveries to build new an innovative treatments,  further advance medical therapies and give patients real hope. Basically, as  Linda Avey, CEO of personalized genomics company 23andMe, says in her blog: “My hope is that this ruling stands and companies will need to actually innovate and create new advances based on genetic findings, not dependent on sole access to them”.