With the government asking everyone to buy and to sacrifice why can’t corporate America show it’s patriotism by making Cipro available as a generic.
Sure Bayer (I think they own the patent) would lose money but it would be good publicity.
The government has already ordered a lot of it.
It was already due to become available as a generic in less than a year, due to patent expirations.
The feds have, however, simply asked Bayer to sell now at the generic price, since it’s basically a windfall situation, so it would just appear mean of Bayer to refuse.
Hate to sound paranoid here, but if I had Anthrax, I’d want the real thing and hang the expense. 
Isn’t Bayer a German company?
Also, I took Cipro at a dose of 750mg twice daily for 10 straight days for a respiratory infection and it failed to defeat the infection. I had to switch to an antibiotic better suited to respitatory infections.
Not to hijack, but didn’t the FDA ‘rush’ Cipro through trial designed to proved it’s effectiveness against respiratory ailments? I know it does well against skin Anthrax and urinary track infections, among others, but not respiratory infections.
It is my understanding that Cipro might not be the best choice for lung borne Anthrax. There are drugs in the Cipro family that are as effective and maybe MORE effective against lung infections like Anthrax.
Cipro hype might be overblown.
Funny you should ask that. Here in Canada, the government decided to ignore Bayers patent protection (which I believe lasts 3 more years in Canada) and requested another company, that already knows the formula, to produce it. I’m very curious to find out why the government did this, their excuse was that this is an emergency. The generic stuff isn’t that much cheaper, can Bayer not produce it quick enough for us? Bayer is considering legal action.
Bayer just (within the past three months) pulled its Baycol cholesterol fighting drug from the world market. It had been counting on those sales to reach their financial goals.
Now you want them to give up the rights to an effective anti-infective drug because of fears of anthrax. Might as well drive the company out of the pharmaceutical business altogether.
I am not sure why Bayer is the only pharmaceutical company to test their product against anthrax, but given the potential for a large sample population over the next few months I would be shocked to learn that there are no other antibiotics which are as effective.
By “corporate America”, do you mean corporations in general, or Bayer specically? If the former, how would they go about this? Just ignore patent law and hope they don’t get sued? If the latter, why would Bayer do that? If they really wanted to help out, wouldn’t it be just as effective and more profitable to keep on producing it themselves, and sell it at generic prices?
According to a guest on today’sScience Friday, one of the reasons Cipro is named as the drug of choice for anthrax is because it’s NOT prescribed for many other infections. (I believe the guest was Dr. Allen Rosenfield of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia in NYC, and if the name of the school isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is.)
One of the challenges for any infectious disease is trying to find a good first-line drug that the bug is sensitive to. Cipro fits this bill. That Bayer chose to test it for anthrax sensitivity was simply a stroke of luck on their part.
Robin
Canada admitted defeat in its little scuffle with Bayer. Personally, I think the government acted in a reprehensible fashion; they can sure as hell afford to pay Bayer a few extra dollars, so why should they be allowed to break a law they would prosecute me for breaking?
Well Rick, after reading more about it, it sounds like it wasn’t an issue of money. Health Canada approached Bayer three times about providing Cipro. In each case they were not satisfied with the quantity that Bayer would be able to provide (there is lots of demand for it right now and I bet their first priority is not Canada). They are still going to stockpile the generic stuff they currently bought and use it if they can’t get sufficient quantity from Bayer if the need arises.
MsRobyn is correct. A lot of other medicines might be effective in fighting Anthrax including good old penicillin.
Unfortunately some bacteria are resistant to some medications. If you start out on a course of treatment for Anthrax infection only to find the bug is resistant to whatever you are using you are screwed. Anthrax (specifically inhalation anthrax) is almost universally lethal once symptoms show. No time to go back and try a different antibiotic as Philster was able to do for a different respiratory infection.
Cipro, as mentioned, is relatively new and not widely prescribed so there is little chance that anthrax will be resistant to it hence it is the drug of choice for this particular badboy.