Drugs industry protecting 'morally unacceptable' patent system

July 17th, 2008

Major drugs companies are using fierce lobbying tactics to protect a pharmaceutical patent system that is "simply morally unacceptable", a world-leading political philosopher will tell a major meeting of UK and European pharmacologists today.

Addressing an audience that will include senior figures from the pharmaceutical industry, Thomas Pogge, Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University in the United States, will argue that international rules on intellectual property "violate the human rights of poor people by denying them access to vital medicines".

He will go on to say that huge mortality and morbidity rates can be dramatically lowered by reforming the way the development of new medical treatments is funded.

In his AstraZeneca-sponsored lecture entitled, 'Advanced Medicines: Must We Exclude the Global Poor?', Pogge will propose an alternative licensing system called the Health Impact Fund (HIF) which he says is "required as an add-on to the existing system to render it human-rights compliant".

The HIF would be a global agency, says Pogge, underwritten by governments. It would offer to reward the patentee of any new medicine, during its first decade or so, with annual payments proportional to this medicine's demonstrated global health impact.

Registering a medicine with the Fund would be voluntary and require a concession affecting its price. Pogge says this would give innovators the opportunity to forgo "monopoly rents in favour of an alternative path that would provide ample rewards for the development of new high-impact medicines without excluding the poor from their use".

Pogge will deliver his AstraZeneca-sponsored lecture on the final day of the Federation of European Pharmacological Societies (EPHAR) 2008 Congress, hosted by the British Pharmacological Society at The University of Manchester.

Speaking ahead of his lecture, Pogge said: "The main responsibility for change lies with politicians and citizens. But pharmaceutical companies are also citizens, and they play a significant role in the political process of most societies. They lobby a lot. And here I do see fault. They lobby for holding the line on a status quo that is simply morally unacceptable.

"They do this because they know the existing rules can have a profitable business model under them and are uncertain what alternative rules would be settled upon once the existing rules were found unacceptable.

"I want to change this conservative attitude. I want to give them an institutional reform that they can endorse and unite behind. I am convinced they would do better, on the whole, with the Health Impact Fund than without. I want to convince them of this. And I want to show them that, on balance, they have more to gain than to lose by supporting this reform.

"It will be harder and harder to hold the line on the existing system, and the HIF reform preserves pretty much everything they like about this system. In other words, they have both moral and strategic reasons to support the HIF."

Pogge's lecture is expected to provoke fierce debate at the conference, with many delegates holding alternative views.

Source: University of Manchester


print this article email this article download pdf blog this article bookmark this article     Digg this Stumble it share on Facebook share on Reddit add to delicious save to Yahoo! bookmarks
3.7/5 after 19 votes

Rank Filter

Move the slider to adjust rank threshold, so that you can hide some of the comments.


Display comments: newest first

  • drel - Jul 17, 2008
    • Rank: 3.9 / 5 (8)
    The "huge mortality and morbidity rates" must "be dramatically lowered"! The current world population is too low at 6.8 billion! Extending our life expectancy and increasing our rate of reproduction must be a top priority. Death is after all... "simply morally unacceptable"!

    Quote "The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive." - Robert Heinlein, "Job", 1984
  • thales - Jul 17, 2008
    • Rank: 4 / 5 (4)
    It sounds like a great idea to me, as long as it remains voluntary.

    Drel, I think the problem is that the poor are being selected against, not that we need to increase the population. Will reducing death increase the population? Yes, but leaving the poor to die doesn't seem like the humane answer to that.
  • Rick69 - Jul 17, 2008
    • Rank: 2.3 / 5 (3)
    Ah yes, a "global agency" will be created to handle this perceived problem. More and more, we see that our sovereignty is being ceded to global concerns that are not accountable at the ballot box. Is this trend really a good thing for our country, even when the goals seem laudable such as in this instance?
  • thales - Jul 17, 2008
    • Rank: not rated yet
    Yes.

    If it's voluntary.
  • GrayMouser - Jul 17, 2008
    • Rank: 3.3 / 5 (4)
    Yeah, that's what we need... more taxes.

    If the mortality rate is the issue (instead of the drug companies or the patent system) why isn't anybody calling out to make DDT legal again? That would improve the mortality rate by killing off the pests that carry diseases.
  • hypothesisnotscience - Jul 17, 2008
    • Rank: 4 / 5 (2)
    Many problems with this guy's idea. First he seems to miss addressing how new drug ideas would become drugs. Is the inventor to foot the bill? How much does it cost to develop a drug anyway? If this fund decides to fund the clinical trials , who decides which drug applications are worthy? Far too much potential conflict of interest, cronyism, and bribes. One need look no further than the U.N. and their officials with their hands in the cookie jar of the U.N. to see how ridiculous this idea is. To be fair, I'm also not in favor of drug companies always looking to extend patent protection by making minor changes to formulations. I also don't like the fact that the U.S. consumer is subsidizing all other nations on the cost of drugs. We need a more level playing field. U.S. consumers need pay far less, while modern industrial nations must pay more. Countries need pay at rates according to per capita income. All those exporting drugs that they had previously imported need pay top dollar. Countries breaking patent laws need pay top dollar.
  • thales - Jul 17, 2008
    • Rank: not rated yet
    Many problems with this guy's idea. First he seems to miss addressing how new drug ideas would become drugs. Is the inventor to foot the bill?


    No, the drug companies would pay for development, as they currently do. Why would this change?

    How much does it cost to develop a drug anyway?


    A lot. This is irrelevant.

    If this fund decides to fund the clinical trials, who decides which drug applications are worthy? Far too much potential conflict of interest, cronyism, and bribes. One need look no further than the U.N. and their officials with their hands in the cookie jar of the U.N. to see how ridiculous this idea is.


    The Fund would decide. This is not difficult. If the company didn't like the Fund's decision, then they can choose to go the traditional route of patenting their drug.

    To be fair, I'm also not in favor of drug companies always looking to extend patent protection by making minor changes to formulations. I also don't like the fact that the U.S. consumer is subsidizing all other nations on the cost of drugs. We need a more level playing field. U.S. consumers need pay far less, while modern industrial nations must pay more. Countries need pay at rates according to per capita income. All those exporting drugs that they had previously imported need pay top dollar. Countries breaking patent laws need pay top dollar.


    Sounds like you want some kind of, I don't know... global government? Some kind of "united" agency enforcing laws on other "nations"? I'm sorry, I just don't agree with that approach. ;)
  • NeilFarbstein - Jul 17, 2008
    • Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
    The patent system is not unethical. There is an Edison out there in India or China and he or she will collect royalties when they get their patents. The idiots that say patents are unethical want to take money out of their mouths and out of their wallets. And conversely, it is not unethical to make Chinese corporations pay American Inventors the money they owe inventors living on this continent.
  • Soylent - Jul 19, 2008
    • Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
    The "huge mortality and morbidity rates" must "be dramatically lowered"! The current world population is too low at 6.8 billion! Extending our life expectancy and increasing our rate of reproduction must be a top priority. Death is after all... "simply morally unacceptable"!


    Extract your head from your anal cavity and look at where population growth is occuring.

    The correlation between miserable living conditions and high rates of birth is absolutely glaring and unmissable if you actually bothered to check. Luckily, I don't think you nor other eco-tards have the power to keep the third world miserable and thus contributing to the population problem.
  • superhuman - Jul 20, 2008
    • Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
    The "huge mortality and morbidity rates" must "be dramatically lowered"! The current world population is too low at 6.8 billion! Extending our life expectancy and increasing our rate of reproduction must be a top priority. Death is after all... "simply morally unacceptable"!


    Extract your head from your anal cavity and look at where population growth is occuring.

    The correlation between miserable living conditions and high rates of birth is absolutely glaring and unmissable if you actually bothered to check. Luckily, I don't think you nor other eco-tards have the power to keep the third world miserable and thus contributing to the population problem.


    Correlation is obvious, but correlation is not causation. One obvious interpretation is that overpopulation (=exceeding the population environment can support at a given technological level) leads to miserable conditions. That actually supports drel's reasoning so I guess you see it the other way around but what supports that interpretation?

July 17th, 2008 all stories
Medicine & Health / Other

Comments: 10
Rank: 3.7/5 after 19 votes

  • Stumble this up

  • Digg this

  • Share it:
  • share on Facebook
  • share on MySpace
  • share on Slashdot
  • rss-newsfeed
  • share on Google
  • share on Reddit
  • add to delicious
  • save to Yahoo! bookmarks
  • share on Windows Live
  • Add to Mixx!
Rating: 3.7/5 after 19 votes


Tags


  • Physicists Demonstrate Quantum Memory with Matter Qubits
    Physicists Demonstrate Quantum Memory with Matter Qubits
    Physics / General Physics
    created Jul 03, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (16) | comments 1
  • 'Holey' Nanosheets for Wastewater Dye Removal
    Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
    created Jul 01, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 1
  • Jellyfish Robot Swims Like its Biological Counterpart
    Jellyfish Robot Swims Like its Biological Counterpart
    Electronics / Robotics
    created Jun 26, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (8) | comments 1
  • Could Maxwell's Demon Exist in Nanoscale Systems?
    Could Maxwell's Demon Exist in Nanoscale Systems?
    Physics / General Physics
    created Jun 24, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (18) | comments 29
  • Living Safely with Robots, Beyond Asimov's Laws
    Living Safely with Robots, Beyond Asimov's Laws
    Electronics / Robotics
    created Jun 22, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (52) | comments 40
  • Other News

    Variations in 5 genes raise risk for most common brain tumors

    Medicine & Health / Genetics

    created 51 minutes ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

    Common genetic variations spread across five genes raise a person's risk of developing the most frequent type of brain tumor, an international research team reports online in Nature Genetics.


    MicroRNAs hold promise for treating diseases in blood vessels

    Medicine & Health / Research

    created 57 minutes ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

    A newly discovered mechanism controls whether muscle cells in blood vessels hasten the development of both atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's disease, according to an article published online today in the journal Nature.


    Wind power may have its own environmental problems

    Medicine & Health / Health

    created 13 minutes ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

    Wind power generation is expected to be a clean and environmentally friendly natural energy source, but a new kind of environmental problem has surfaced as infrasonic waves caused by windmills are suspected of causing health ...


    Malaysian authorities seize 'Viagra coffee' : report

    Medicine & Health / Health

    created 4 hours ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

    Malaysia's health authorities have seized over 20,000 dollars worth of coffee mixed with sildenafil, the main ingredient in erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, a report said Sunday.


    People sometimes seek the truth, but most prefer like-minded views

    People sometimes seek the truth, but most prefer like-minded views

    Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

    created Jul 01, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (10) | comments 9

    We swim in a sea of information, but filter out most of what we see and hear. A new analysis of data from dozens of studies sheds new light on how we choose what we do and do not hear. The study found that ...