[Ip-health] another op-ed smears Thai CLs

[Benjamin Krohmal]

This one is by pharma funded Peter Pitts, who at least discloses some
of his industry ties...


The Baltimore Sun

Drug patent theft carries high price
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-
op.patents20feb20,0,89958.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines
Peter J. Pitts
February 20, 2007


Imagine that you are an inventor and the government steals your
highly lucrative idea. The next day, you are informed that the
government plans to mass-produce your invention and give it away for
free. If you're lucky, they'll give you a pittance for your efforts.

This is what happens, with increasing regularity, to the
manufacturers of lifesaving medicines. The most recent example
occurred in Thailand when the military-appointed government issued
"compulsory licenses" to obtain two drugs.

The first, the HIV/AIDS drug Kaletra, is produced by a U.S. company.
The second, the popular heart-disease drug Plavix, is manufactured by
companies in France and the U.S. The Thai government granted itself
the right to produce Kaletra for five years and Plavix indefinitely.

And in November, the Thai government issued a compulsory license for
an antiretroviral treatment for HIV without even warning the
manufacturer.

Thailand's behavior is hardly unique. Across the world, it has been
going on for years. China, for example, produces more patent rip-offs
than any other country. And in India, the government recently passed
an amendment denying patents to pharmaceuticals derived from
"previous knowledge," a purposefully arbitrary phrase.

Last week, an Indian company began offering a generic form of the
cholesterol-lowering Lipitor in Denmark, despite the fact that the
creator of Lipitor still holds the patent. Although the Indian
version was already available in India and some other emerging
markets, Denmark is the first Western country to sell a copycat
version of the drug.

Meanwhile, Brazil and other Latin American countries have repeatedly
threatened to use patent theft to strong-arm pharmaceutical companies.

Even worse, U.S. lawmakers are piling on. Last month, 22 members of
Congress signed a letter to the U.S. trade representative expressing
their support for the Thai government's renegade action. This is a
slap in the face to pharmaceutical companies, whose expensive
investments in drug research and technology ensure that these
lifesaving medicines exist in the first place.

Thankfully, however, it appears that those responsible for ensuring
global health are taking notice of the detrimental effects such
sweeping policies have on the world's poor.

In a speech in Thailand last week, three days after the Thai
government's arbitrary decision, Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general
of the World Health Organization, laid out the key reasons that
communicable diseases remain such a large problem in poor countries
and are often neglected by research and development. One of those
reasons, she explained, is that the pharmaceutical industry "has
little incentive to develop drugs and vaccines for markets that
cannot pay."

First, such theft discourages innovation. Drug development is an
enormously expensive, time-consuming venture requiring years of
effort by teams of highly trained researchers.

In 2004, according to the Government Accountability Office, the
pharmaceutical industry spent $60 billion on research and
development. The average drug costs nearly $1 billion to develop.

If a company stands no chance of recouping even a portion of that
investment, where is its incentive to tackle the many diseases that
ravage the developing world? Further, if it is acceptable for generic
drug producers to make a substantial profit on the distribution of
large amounts of drugs - none of which they invented - why are the
companies that created the medicines not justified in turning a profit?

Furthermore, there is no guarantee that generic drugs produced
overseas will even work. Quite often, copycat versions of patented
drugs are manufactured in factories that do not meet WHO standards.

Impoverished nations such as Thailand wish to combat diseases in the
most efficient way possible. But even though it's easier for
governments and activist groups to attack pharmaceutical companies
and steal their patents, the greater challenge in the world's poorest
nations is health care infrastructure, which is in serious need of
investment.

In the face of these larger structural challenges, patent theft is
simply a cop-out - and a deadly one at that.

Peter J. Pitts, a former associate commissioner at the Food and Drug
Administration, is director of the Center for Medicine in the Public
Interest, which accepts donations from health care corporations. His
e-mail is peter.pitts@cmpi.org.




Benjamin Krohmal
Coordinator - Project on Medical Innovation
Knowledge Ecology International
Tel: +1-202-332-2670 ex. 14
Fax: +1-202-332-2673
ben.krohmal@keionline.org