Barr Pharmaceuticals is lobbying for a US law that would let the sale of copied medicines made by the biotech market. Barr is dispatching pretty much a dozen representatives along with many other generic drug lobbyists, to try to pass their law through each Congress and the Home of Represenatives.

Other biotech corporations such as Amgen and Genetech Inc. stand firmly in opposition of the new law. They contest that producing copies of the extremely complicated gene based medication pose a larger overall health threat than copying the tradition therapies.

According to a report on Bloomberg.com, “the outcome of the fight will determine whether generic makers, such as Barr and Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., can sell competing versions of biotech medicines when they lose patent protection. Generic biotech drugs might decrease costs by 33 %, analysts say.”

Supporters of Barr Pharmaceuticals contend that permitting copies could save the biotech industry more than 14 billion dollars in the subsequent ten years. At the moment, the biotech market accounts for 32.eight billion of the 251.eight billion dollars of prescription drug sales to US pharmacies in 2005.

Bloomberg.com also states, “A lot of biotech medicines carry high price tag tags, and generic versions are likely to reduced prices by 20 % to 30 %, Elise Wang, an analyst with Citigroup Inc. in New York, mentioned in an interview. One of the most high-priced biotech medicines is Genzyme Corp.’s Cerezyme, a remedy for a rare enzyme disorder that can price $200,000 a year.”