[Ip-health] FT: Medicine and Markets

[Stephanie Weinberg]

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Financial Times editorial (page 8)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/77e9d28c-330c-11db-87ac-0000779e2340.html
Medicine and markets
Published: August 24 2006 03:00 | Last updated: August 24 2006 03:00
Like a recurring nightmare, the conflict between pharmaceuticals
industry profits and poor countries' desperate need to treat diseases
such as Aids and malaria just will not go away. After bitterly dividing
the World Trade Organisation, it is now threatening to break out all
over again in the World Health Organisation.
The reason this time is US insistence, in bilateral trade talks, that
developing nations agree to stiffer patent protection rules. As well as
restricting competition by generic drug makers, the rules would, most
crucially, set tighter conditions on poor countries' freedom to use
compulsory licences to override patents and import essential medicines
they cannot produce locally.
A hard US line on that issue also provoked a furore in the WTO, which
was eventually settled by a compromise that protected poor countries'
compulsory licensing rights. Although Washington claims its bilateral
provisions are consistent with the WTO agreement, they look suspiciously
like a backdoor way to circumscribe it, at the urging of US drug
companies and their powerful allies in Congress.
The use of American political and industrial might to impose demands
roughshod on weaker partners is an unedifying spectacle - the more so
because the US itself toyed with compulsory licensing after its 2001
anthrax scare and has recently begun approving imported generic copies
of Aids treatments. Given the rarity of compulsory licensing worldwide,
the US campaign also looks like an overreaction.
That said, there is a genuine problem at the heart of the dispute. The
industry's incentive to innovate would be weakened if widespread erosion
of patent protection enabled generic drug makers to eat away its
profits. However, the moral and practical case for providing poor
countries with access to essential medicines, at a price they can afford
to pay, is equally compelling.
Public criticism has shamed some western drugs companies into stepping
up research into diseases found mainly in very poor countries and
selling them medicines at discounted prices. But the results so far have
barely dented the problem. Other solutions are needed. Some can come
from more innovative co-operation between business, aid organisations
and community groups, notably to improve health systems and medicines
supply. Philanthropic bodies, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, can contribute towards the cost. But the scale of market
failure also calls for a much greater commitment of public resources, to
promote the development of treatments for diseases that are particularly
common in poor countries and help pay for them.
United Nations members have pledged to ensure poor countries' access to
affordable essential medicines, in partnership with industry. Better
ways to honour that pledge must be found. Trade bullying of the weak by
the strong is not one of them.
Copyright <http://www.ft.com/servicestools/help/copyright>  The
Financial Times Limited 2006


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Stephanie Weinberg
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