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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/call-for-action-on-eu-drug-rules.jpg"><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Main-News-7-11.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-816" title="Comprehensive Spending Review" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Main-News-7-11.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="201" /></a><br />
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<p>Senior doctors have written to Prime Minister David Cameron calling for action over a legal loophole that enables drug companies to set &#8220;exorbitant prices&#8221; for drugs to treat rare diseases.</p>
<p>Pharmaceutical firms are obtaining licences for existing drugs under EU legislation and then hugely increasing the cost of them, they said.</p>
<p>Some NHS hospitals are now refusing to fund drugs that were previously available cheaply while the NHS faces paying millions of pounds extra a year for the same, or very similar, medicines.</p>
<p>The open letter, which is also addressed to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, is signed by 20 consultants and is published online in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).</p>
<p>The doctors, who treat people with rare &#8220;orphan&#8221; diseases, said they were writing &#8220;to express our concern at an unintended effect of the European Union&#8217;s regulations on orphan drugs.</p>
<p>The doctors said they had already written to the Department of Health for England and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency about the issue.</p>
<p>&#8220;Legislation on orphan drugs, far from encouraging the development of new treatments for orphan diseases, is severely limiting the availability of existing treatments.&#8221;</p>
<p>The doctors provide several examples of price hikes, including a drug to treat rare muscle diseases which used to cost £800 to £1,000 per patient per year.</p>
<p>In a BMJ investigation, published on Tuesday, Dr Sam Richmond, a consultant neonatologist at Sunderland Royal Infirmary, and a signatory of the open letter, said: &#8220;If drug companies are undertaking research where nobody else was interested &#8211; and some are &#8211; then a monopoly may be justified.</p>
<p>&#8220;But if it&#8217;s a product already in use, they should clear off, or sell at a price comparable with the existing price.&#8221;</p>
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