‘Intellectual Property’ isn’t about innovation or creativity. It is the second word in the phrase which clearly defines what it is about. Ownership.

I don’t have a problem with patents. In most cases they work reasonably well in protecting someone’s hard work from exploitation. So Frootle get to protect their round edged iThings and we get the choice of those or Samtel’s sharp edged Spamdroid devices. There is choice of brand and because these are toys/tools rather than essential lifesavers we want them rather than need them so the prices are constrained by competition which circumvents exploitation by excessively greedy bastards.

Medicine is different, it is necessary to our health and wellbeing and in many cases a medication is specific or ‘breakthrough’ for the disease and/or patient. (e.g. GT3s are not well served by Harvoni and/or Sofosbuvir is the backbone of HCV tx). This has allowed a situation where the patent goes beyond protecting IP and allows the excessively greedy bastards to exploit society as a whole while justifying their prices with bullshit spin about R&D costs and rewarding themselves with $400 million per year for doing so. ick:' />

I’m not certain what the full answer is here? Perhaps some sort of process where medicines that are deemed “Lifesaving” by the WHO or other designated body can be manufactured by any suitable Quality & GMP compliant company as a generic with some form of regulated licensing fees payable to the Patent holder? This may provide the necessary competition to control pricing and still provide adequate reward to the patent holder by the sheer volume of sales.

Thanks Fitz,

3. Charge 20% - 35% tariff for US originated medications imported from abroad.

Wouldn’t this “raise prices, not lower them”?

I ask this because for some (myself included) such an increase would probably not have much impact on our ability to access generic HCV medications but I am well aware of others for whom it is already a struggle to meet even the costs of sourcing direct from Bangladesh or China along with the associated costs for medical care and testing during treatment. We need to keep in mind that HCV can be an extremely debilitating disease and that not everyone with it is lucky enough to still have a continuing income stream that provides them the opportunity to shrug off such increases.

Congratulations on SVR24 psavic!

To our members and guests:

Anand Medicos have applied and been accepted for inclusion in this Distributors Market section of the forum. Further information about the policies for inclusion can be read at these links:

http://fixhepc.com/forum/generic-medication-access-channels.html

While we take care only to list distributors with a good track record FixHepC can not guarantee their performance. If you want that guarantee please use the Buyers Club and REDEMPTION.

Hi Carolyn and welcome,

After waiting for so long many of us do experience a rollercoaster of emotions during treatment although it often settles down over tIme. I don’t think I can state it better than member ‘fitz’ did a couple of days ago. Click on this link to see his comments: https://fixhepc.com/forum/generic-medication-access-channels/1427-access-generic-medication-here-to-save-your-life.html#23310

I also suspect that the rapid physical changes to our bodies probably has something to do with this too. At three weeks into treatment you will have had a massive decline in your viral load, possibly even to the point of the virus being undetectable and your liver functions etc. will have rapidly moved back towards the ‘normal’ range. With all these physiological changes occurring so quickly it doesn’t surprise me to find there are emotional effects as well.

For your indigestion, it would help to know a bit more about your status and treatment and many here put some basic information in their signature panels so that others can see at a glance (it doesn’t have to be as long winded as mine! ) – you can find out how to do that here: https://fixhepc.com/forum/technical-support/977-how-to-add-signature-details-to-your-profile.html

I assume you are genotype 3(?) but it would also be useful to at least know your fibrosis level and which treatment you are on. For example, if you are taking Ribavirin then indigestion is not unusual but you can reduce the symptoms by making sure you take them with some fatty food (even something like a PNB sandwich will help) and for most of the others a light meal at the same time as you take the pills will often help.

Hi Jorge, much of what you say mirrors my experiences of Sof/dac treatment during the first few weeks. Many things that I had put down to aging over the previous 10-20 years improved and I also felt less need for sleep and was more wakeful when I did….but still woke up feeling more refreshed. I also had the ‘hyped’ feeling at times and as treatment progressed it sometimes felt a bit like a rollercoaster but that did smooth out gradually. I think that removing (or at least suppressing in my case) the virus in our bodies results in some very significant physical and accompanying emotional changes in a very short time frame and we need to make allowances for that. Longer term, many of us see continuing improvements and I feel sure that things like your itchiness will decrease even further or possibly even resolve.

Hi ALIKHAN,

Here is the Redemption trial link. https://fixhepc.com/redemption-imagine-freedom-from-hepatitis-c

Monkmed provide FixHepC with support for these trials. https://www.monkmed.com/redemption/

As a registered clinical trial, Redemption medications can be delivered to Canada. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02657694

Hope this assists.

Welcome Quinn,

Looks like everyone else is in holiday mode. If you scroll up this page you will find a number of tabs including Search just above your first post. Entering Cipla or Hepcivir in there will bring up many posts mentioning those names although as Chapel mentioned Sof/Led, Sofosbuvir & Ledipasvir or harvoni (generic or original) all contain the same active ingredients so I would expect any side effects will be much the same regardless of the particular brand.

I was on a slightly different treatment due to my genotype but from my experience and talking to and reading about others who were on the same as you the sides do seem to vary from person to person and often vary through treatment with not all getting the sudden improvement that some do. I guess it may also depend a bit on how bad your HCV symptoms were pretreatment too. Yours don’t seem too dissimilar to what some others have experienced but please ask if anything is concerning you as I’m sure someone will be able to chime in to advise.

Something that may help is to ensure you remain well hydrated by drinking plenty of water as this seems to reduce some of the sides.