[Ip-health] Gates Foundation Giving Poses Challenges to Pharmaceutical Industry

[Joan Ramos]

from Philanthropy News Digest
April 18, 2007
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=3D175800048


Gates Foundation Giving Poses Challenges to Pharmaceutical Industry


The billions that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
<http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm> has poured into global
health initiatives over the last decade is challenging the world's top
drugmakers to rethink the way they do drug discovery, Reuters reports.

According to Intelligence.360, an annual report from IMS Health, Inc.
<http://www.imshealth.com/ims/portal/pages/homeFlash/us/0,2764,6599,00.html=
>,
a pharmaceutical information group, the emergence of large-scale
philanthropy dedicated to global health issues is both a threat and a
collaboration opportunity for drug manufacturers. Moreover, given the
sheer size of the Gates Foundation, drug companies may find that it
makes more sense, from a practical as well as a public relations
standpoint, to partner with the foundation even if they succeed in
making a discovery first. Or, as IMS stated in its report, "Pharma
companies need to develop an explicit strategy to deal with this
phenomenon."

For instance, a $287 million Gates Foundation program announced last
July created the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery, an
international network of sixteen labs dedicated to trying new approaches
to AIDS vaccine development. The foundation rewards individual labs that
come up with innovative ideas and helps develop those ideas, while also
ensuring that the labs collaborate with rivals. In order to achieve
results more quickly, however, the labs may need to use patented
compounds still under development at for-profit pharmaceutical and
biotech firms, a move that will likely lead to debate over the ethics
surrounding patents on life-saving AIDS drugs and vaccines, of which
there are more than two hundred in development.

"Whether or not the Gates Foundation effort succeeds, it benefits pharma
companies to stay in the game, working synergistically with the
foundation," said IMS. "The alternative is for pharma to allow itself to
be perceived as indifferent to global health concerns =97 or to be
unseated in the pursuit of advances in world health."

/Original article:
=93Gates Foundation Billions Change Pharma Landscape.=94
<http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-gates-pharmaceuticals.htm=
l>
Reuters 4/17/07.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-gates-pharmaceuticals.html=
?_r=3D1&oref=3Dslogin

/

--
Joana Ramos, MSW
Cancer Resources & Advocacy
Seattle WA USA
Tel. +1-206-229-2420
http://ramoslink.info/
www.cancersurvivorsproject.org
www.healthyskepticism.org