[Ip-health] Eminent Academics: IGWG Delegates Should Explore New Mechanisms to Correct Current Deficiencies in Medicine System

[Ethan Guillen]

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April 28, 2008
Contact: Ethan Guillen, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
ethan.guillen@essentialmedicine.org

Eminent Academics: IGWG Delegates Should Explore New Mechanisms to Correct
Current Deficiencies in Medicine System

Today eminent academics including Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Sir
John Sulston and Dr. Jim Kim of Partners in Health and Harvard University
called on World Health Organization delegates to the Intergovernmental
Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property to
consider innovative mechanisms to correct current deficiencies in the acces=
s
and innovation system.

Speaking of proposals currently under discussion at the IGWG in a joint
statement titled, "Making Innovation and Tech Transfer Work for Global
Health: The University's Role and Responsibility to Society," the
signatories wrote:

"These proposals include a treaty on bio-medical R&D and new incentive
mechanisms for R&D that would use prizes as incentives for research
(including both voluntary open licensing or non-voluntary mechanisms). Thes=
e
ideas, while varied and plausibly contestable in their details, all fall
well within the types of solutions that are the result of significant
research on the economics of innovation and access."

The statement also calls on delegates to the IGWG negotiation to consider
new solutions to current deficiencies in the drug development and access
system stating, "[W]e encourage the Intergovernmental Working Group to
support the exploration of new and innovative mechanisms that seek to
correct the deficiencies of the current system."

Universities Allied for Essential Medicines joins in this call and in
particular would urge consideration of the Barbados and Bolivian proposals
on prize funds and the R&D treaty.

###

The full statement and list of signatories is below.



Making Innovation and Tech Transfer Work for Global Health:
The University's Role and Responsibility to Society

April 28, 2008

This week, a working group of the World Health Organization is meeting to
discuss innovative institutional approaches to address the lack of research
funding for diseases that disproportionately affect the global poor.

The proposals before the WHO's Intergovernmental Working Group on Public
Health, Innovation, and Intellectual Property include innovations meant to
draw investment that will serve the needs of populations too poor or too
small to provide sufficient market pull and to overcome the systematic
problems of above-marginal cost pricing inherent in patent-based innovation=
.
These proposals include a treaty on bio-medical R&D and new incentive
mechanisms for R&D that would use prizes as incentives for research
(including both voluntary open licensing or non-voluntary mechanisms[1]).
These ideas, while varied and plausibly contestable in their details, all
fall well within the types of solutions that are the result of significant
research on the economics of innovation and access.[2]

Despite the obvious necessity for greater investment in research to serve
the needs of the global poor, and the substantial academic backing for the
types of solutions placed before the WHO, the Association of University
Technology Managers (AUTM) initially asked its members, in an April 16, 200=
8
memorandum, to add their support to a letter =AD reflecting the position of
the pharmaceutical industry =AD that resists these institutional innovation=
s.
=B3Prize systems,=B2 the initial AUTM memorandum stated, =B3a medical R&D t=
reaty,
and compulsory patent pools are being advocated as alternatives to patents
and IP protections at the April 28 meeting. These solutions could pose a
challenge to our current and very successful system of innovation and tech
transfer.=B2

Following a campaign in opposition to this proceeding, the president of AUT=
M
apologized that the organization had appeared to endorse the letter and
reaffirmed the organization's support for a =B3broad array=B2 of strategies
=B3that serve the global public good and ensure access alongside innovation=
.=B2
While the ultimate outcome was satisfactory, the initial miscommunication
raised doubts about where the American scientific community stood in advanc=
e
of the crucial meeting at the WHO. The event is a symptom of a larger
problem at universities: Our positions on questions of research, global
development, and technology transfer have never been set in an open,
community wide debate. As a result, universities lack a coherent approach
aimed at addressing research on neglected diseases and access to essential
medicines for the global poor, an absence that is at odds with our core
mission of disseminating knowledge for the public good.

This situation must change. Basic questions of scientific research,
university technology transfer, and their relation to access to knowledge
and development should properly be addressed by the governing bodies and
faculties of the universities. Technology transfer offices have a
constructive role to play in implementing policy set by scientists and othe=
r
scholars. But AUTM should not be speaking in the name of the university
community as a whole.

We therefore urge our universities to begin a new, open process for setting
policies regarding the funding and licensing of basic science: These
policies must be set by the academic faculties, in particular the scientist=
s
whose research is at stake and social scientists and others who study
innovation and development. These processes should be conducted in open
forums with opportunity for input from patient advocates, students, and the
broader public. This will ensure that the policies serve the public good
and reflect the values of the university community.

Furthermore, we encourage the Intergovernmental Working Group to support th=
e
exploration of new and innovative mechanisms that seek to correct the
deficiencies of the current system.

Universities have a social compact with society. As educational and researc=
h
institutions, it is our responsibility to generate and transmit knowledge,
both to our students and the public. We have a specific and central role in
helping to promote innovation in many fields and to manage the deployment o=
f
our innovations for the public benefit. In no field are the moral
imperatives to do so as clear as they are in medicine. It is high time that
we discussed this moral imperative as the open, deliberative communities
that we believe ourselves to be.

[1] Of the five member country proposals on prizes to stimulate R&D, four
that address the unmet global R&D needs would rely on voluntary open
licensing to promote access. A fifth involving cancer drugs in developing
countries, would involve non-voluntary licenses to use patents, in return
for prize type rewards.

[2]  See, e.g., Michael Kremer, Pharmaceuticals and the Developing World,
The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Autumn, 2002), pp.
67-90; Steven Shavell & Tanguy van Ypersele, Rewards versus Intellectual
Property Rights, Journal of Law and Economics, Volume 44, Number 2, October
2001, 525-547; William Jack and Jean O. Lanjouw Financing Pharmaceutical
Innovation: How Much Should Poor Countries Contribute? The World Bank
Economic Review 2005 19(1):45-67; Michele Boldrin & David K. Levine, Agains=
t
Intellectual Monopoly, Cambridge University Press 2008; Joseph Stiglitz,
Prizes Not Patents, at
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz81; Aidan Hollis, An
Efficient Reward System for Pharmaceutical Innovation, at
www.who.int/intellectualproperty/news/en/Submission-Hollis.pdf.
Initial Signatories

Joseph Stiglitz
Nobel Laureate in Economics
University Professor, Columbia University

Sir John Sulston
Nobel Laureate in Medicine
Professor of Life Sciences, University of
Manchester

Yochai Benkler
Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial
Legal Studies, Harvard University

Jim Yong Kim
Professor of Social Medicine
Harvard University

William W. Fisher III
Hale and Dorr Professor of Intellectual
Property Law, Harvard University

Richard Nelson
Henry R. Luce Professor of International
Political Economy, Columbia University

Anthony So
Director of the Program in Global Health
and Technology Access, Duke University

Paul Davis
Director
U.S. Government Relations, Health GAP

Kevin Outterson
Director of the Health Law Program
Boston University School of Law

Ian Shapiro
Sterling Professor of Political Science
Yale University

Amy Kapczynski
Assistant Professor of Law, University of
California, Berkeley, School of Law

Kaveh Khoshnood
Assistant Professor in Public Health Practice
Yale University

Thomas Pogge
Professor of Philosophy
Yale University

Matthew Rimmer
Senior Lecturer
ANU College of Law

Tom Kalil
Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology
UC Berkeley

Aidan Hollis
Associate Professor of Economics
University of Calgary







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