[Ip-health] Letters to Wall Street Journal from KEI, IFPMA and Oxfam on "Bangkok's Drug War Goes Global" editorial

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://online.wsj.com/page/letters.html?mod=2_0048

Untangling Thailand's Drug Policies

Your March 7 editorial, "Bangkok's Drug War Goes Global," unfairly
describes the situation in Thailand on drug patents. WTO rules do
normally require that compulsory licenses on patents are only given
after a prior negotiation with the right owner on "reasonable
commerical terms and conditions," as determined "within their own legal
system and practice." However, when the patent is used by the
government, or for an emergency, or to remedy anticompetitive
practices, the WTO rules waive this obligation. In these three cases,
the government only has to offer adequate remuneration for the use of
the patent. The Thai government is negotiating with the patent owners
on the matter of the royalty.

In every case that the Thailand government has acted, prices for
products were very high, relative to average incomes in Thailand.
Unless they acted, most people in Thailand would not have access to
these medicines.

We note also that the United States issued compulsory licenses on
patents five times since June of 2006, including cases involving
patents on set-top boxes for satellite television (DirectTV), automatic
transmissions (Toyota), software (Digital Rights Management patents
used by Microsoft), medical devices (patents used by Johnson and
Johnson), and computer memory chips (the FTC Rambus case).

James Love
Knowledge Ecology International
Washington, D.C.

Your editorial is right on the mark, raising important issues around
access to medicines, drug innovation and the motivations behind
Thailand's seizure of foreign companies' drug patents.

Thailand's government must manage two conflicting roles; the first, as
a guarantor of Thai citizens' public health, and second, as the owner
of the government-owned pharmaceutical manufacturing company, the
Government Pharmaceutical Organization. In the past, GPO has enjoyed
preferential access to the local public hospital drug market. Today,
Thailand's military government claims that it needs to issue compulsory
licenses for "essential drugs" to improve public access under medical
insurance schemes. Its actions suggest otherwise.

First, the compulsory license issued against Sanofi-Aventis's
cardiovascular drug Plavix is bizarre, given the existence of multiple
generic and patented cardiovascular drugs available and the absence of
any campaign in Thailand to address cardiovascular disease among an
increasingly obese population that smokes heavily. Second, despite its
claims to the contrary, the Thai government had no serious contacts
with innovator companies supplying HIV/AIDS drugs since early 2005 --
nearly two years before its aggressive action to undermine the patents
of two HIV/AIDS drugs for which two companies, Abbott Laboratories and
Merck, had invested to develop the market in Thailand over several
years.

Thailand's actions raise the risks and the costs for drug suppliers,
who may be reluctant to introduce "essential" drugs into a market where
intellectual property rights aren't guaranteed. It could also have
significant knock-on effects for patients and medical tourists in
Thailand. That's no small change -- the latter industry alone earned
Thailand $400 million annually in recent years.

Dr. Harvey E. Bale, Jr.
Director General
International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and
Associations
Geneva, Switzerland

The actions of the Thai government you deemed as "dangerous" in your
bombastic editorial are fully compliant with international intellectual
property obligations at the World Trade Organization.

The intellectual property safeguards that Thailand "exploited" have
been invoked by many countries, not only for medicines but for many
fields of technology. In fact, the United States has been a major user
of compulsory licensing, often relying on it to enable the development
or use of other forms of technology.

The U.S. has pressured developing countries to impose strict
intellectual property rules to protect pharmaceutical monopolies. But
the advertised benefits of these rules have not panned out.
Pharmaceutical companies focus on rich country customers, and the
diseases of poor people in developing countries are neglected. Around
90% of pharmaceutical sales go to individuals in wealthy markets, while
all of Asia (excluding Japan) and Africa only account for 5%.

Thailand faces very serious public health problems. Over half a million
HIV positive people in Thailand need antiretroviral medicines, and
heart disease is now one of the country's top causes of death. Without
new versions of medicines at affordable prices, the growing burden of
disease will not only threaten the health of Thai citizens, but also
the economic productivity of the country.

Thailand has taken action to secure the health of its citizens and
should be applauded for taking these issues seriously.

Raymond C. Offenheiser
President, Oxfam America
Boston, Massachusetts

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@keionline.org