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US, on Behalf of Big Pharma, Might Just Choke the WHO
GENEVA - As the 61st annual World Health Assembly gathers in Geneva this week, a major issue that the world's governments are struggling with is patents on medicines, and whether the option to digress from a strict patent system should be endorsed by the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO).
The United States is the sole country obstructing the ability of the WHO to push for a more flexible intellectual property system, according to several sources. This issue is being negotiated at the WHO's Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (IGWG).
According to the WHO's website, "developing countries remain largely excluded from the benefits of modern science." IGWG's mandate is "to prepare a global strategy and plan of action on essential health research to address conditions affecting developing countries disproportionately."
IGWG was to have already agreed on its plan of action. However, the controversial issue of intellectual property has prevented consensus, and negotiations remain ongoing. At issue for the U.S. is the further dilution of its desired strict intellectual property system and the interests of its pharmaceutical industry.
"We have some sort of consensus that the WHO should step in and work in the area of intellectual property (in terms of helping countries push for a more flexible intellectual property system)," Thailand's lead negotiator, Dr. Shripen Tantives, said at a panel on Access to Medicines organised by Oxfam Tuesday.
"We think this is a key moment that many countries either developed and developing agree that WHO should do something to improve health in the area of IP (intellectual property). We have these principles in the draft (plan of action). Unfortunately, (complete) consensus is pending because of only one member. Only one member disagrees with the new role of the WHO."
Tantives, who said she was speaking in her personal capacity, noted that since the IGWG process began in 2006, "member states had to make compromises which resulted in some diluted text which will have consequences for the provisions and implementation in the future."
Noting her dissatisfaction with the current text, Tantives said, "(With) what we have now in the IGWG (plan of action) we are not satisfied because if we go into the details, we have to compromise, to delete some very substantive elements."
Ellen 't Hoen of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) who spoke at the same panel, said "companies today charge high prices because they have patents. There are two consequences of this patent system. One, R&D (research and development) is directed only where there is a market. Two, access (to drugs) is horribly expensive."
Patents provide companies a monopoly over their knowledge. "If we finance research and development independently from access, we may be getting somewhere."
She described the current system as the "blockbuster model", where pharmaceutical companies build their operations around a few blockbuster drugs or drugs that command very high sales. The result is neglect of the diseases that developing countries' populations suffer from.
"We don't get out of bed if we can't make 1.5 billion dollars per product (per annum). The blockbuster model is not necessarily the way to go."
'T Hoen also said that the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Public Health Declaration of 2001, where the World Trade Organisation (WTO) declared that TRIPS should not compromise governments' public health objectives, "put access firmly on the political agenda."
Since then, she said, the prices of first generation anti-retrovirals for HIV have come down dramatically. Countries have started issuing compulsory licences (for production of generic versions of patented drugs), as in Thailand and Brazil.
However, "progress is confined (largely) to AIDS-related treatments. What about other diseases and products? Success is on a case-by-case, drug-by-drug basis, and is highly dependent on civil society actions."
In the last two years, she said, Thailand issued compulsory licences for anti-retovirals, and for drugs to fight cancer and heart disease, and the country came under considerable political and economic pressure from the United States.
Speaking at the same panel, Nicoletta Dentico from the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), a non-profit drug development organisation, noted that despite some success stories, the general situation remains bleak. "The 10/90 gap still remains." The 10/90 gap refers to the developed countries accounting for 90 percent of global pharmaceutical sales, whilst accounting for only 10 percent of the 14 million plus global deaths occurring annually due to infectious diseases. Developing countries represent 90 percent of the 14 million deaths but only 10 percent of pharmaceutical sales.
Said Dentico, "When you have nothing except death as the alternative, you may want to use common sense if a drug should be registered (patented) or not. It is important to talk about patents, but look at least at the transition phase at what is lacking in terms of needs."
Can the WHO be a major player in correcting the crisis of the current system? Speaking to IPS on the sidelines of the panel, Oxfam America's Rohit Malpani said that "the WHO is an effective counterweight. It provides advice to developing countries to use safeguards, and it can use its voice to prevent governments from signing up to higher levels of IP. It can assist developing countries by providing studies on the public health consequences of data exclusivity, for example. However, there is resistance from the U.S."
Malpani added, "WTO has already guaranteed countries the ability to override patents in certain circumstances. WHO should be able to provide the advice and technical support. All countries should be able to attain this support. We should not even have this discussion to begin with."
© 2008 Inter Press Service
26 Comments so far
Show AllIt might not be such a bad thing to be excluded from modern science
"Treefrog May 22nd, 2008 1:33 pm
It might not be such a bad thing to be excluded from modern science"
then exclude yourself and see what quality of life you have
i have to assume we're paying royalties to the ancient greeks for their discovery of the healing powers of willow bark (aspirin) and the indigenous of south america for their discovery of curare (pancuronium bromide, a paralytic which makes modern anesthesia possible).
just kidding...
I assume Treefrog means, take care of yourself via diet and avoiding enviromental toxins.
In developing countries they don't have that option and die from the shits. Hell, even in the USA a lot of inner city and slumburbs don't have access to organic produce, maybe even no produce.
Greedy ass USA.
Just a logical extension to their Medicare Part D giveaway of senior's survival moneys and US tax dollars to the big Pharma.
Imagine the progress that could be made if big pharma wasn't spending energy creating drugs for (and creating markets for) erectile dysfunction, skin wrinkles, hair loss.
"Forgiveness May 22nd, 2008 2:49 pm
I assume Treefrog means, take care of yourself via diet and avoiding enviromental toxins."
All other things being equal, I think I'll keep my tetanus vaccine up-to-date.
Might want to be sure you know the source of your vaccines. Lots of crap out there and we all know that nobody ever dumps crappy vaccines on the US, no way.
It is no surprise that the US would support "Big Pharma"....money....is after all more important than being concerned about the health of its citizenry...
and BIG PHARMA rakes it in....
My stomach tightens when some big drug company generously offers to "help" people who are too poor to pay for their drugs.
Any society that makes philanthropy necessary is necessarily one that has created such gross inequities in wealth that it has already exposed itself as having no heart.
Then the filthy rich drug companies use a portion of their obscene profits to try to convince us how much they care about the poor.
Maybe if these sociopathic monsters spent a fraction of their lobbying, marketing, and PR budgets on R&D and price reductions...I had better return to earth while I still can.
"In developing countries they don't have that option and die from the shits."
Maybe, but the particular drug that stops diarrhoea costs a few cents (which is not to say that it is neccessarily available). However, the big advances in human mortality rates were not made by drug companies or doctors, but by sanitary engineers: water-borne sewerage.
There is an inherent (moral) conflict of interest between the R&D and the marketing in any health related industry. Obviously the (?)free market is not the place for that.
"Forgiveness May 22nd, 2008 3:52 pm
Might want to be sure you know the source of your vaccines. Lots of crap out there and we all know that nobody ever dumps crappy vaccines on the US, no way."
Just another fantastic job done by this Administration makeing sure that nothing interferes with the importation of cheap crap from China so that the Walton family (WalMart founders) can be that much wealthier. Heaven forbid the FDA should do its job and insist that pharmaceutical imports meet some minimum standard.
I don't get it. Why doesn't the rest of the world just tell the US to "F*ck Off!" in these sort of situations? Why should one nation led by a group of sociopaths have the right to gum it up for everyone else? If a bunch of 8th graders are smart enough to boycott Bush's test zelotry then you would figure that world leaders could do the same to Bush's zelotry for obscene profits over health.
Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Agri, AIPAC, etc, etc
So much for a free and independent Congress
kahalab, a bunch of eighth graders are not a country with the biggest kid on the planetary block being a bully, who besides being a moral idiot is half witted and insane. Hell I live here and I'm afraid of them. I just hope they don't find out who Nietzsche is or consider him a threat.
It is simply a given that the United State will not partake in any international organization that promotes human welfare. We are above all of that nonsense. We know what is best for the welfare of the military industrial complex and to heck with the rest of the world. We rule! End of story.
It's the drugs from Canada that are "of unknown quality", everything from China is OK. The FDA and President Bush know these things
... of big pharma, by big pharma, and for big pharma. And the people traded them for jobs.
How is it that large drug companies have 'intellectual property rights'? Isn't much of their research accomplished with federal (OUR) dollars?
Shouldn't that mean that they work for us - and therefore WE ought to own the rights?
Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that: Any individual that develops anything while employed generally forfeits the patent rights to the company. That includes those working in jobs outside of R & D, and those that followed their own research on their own time, even without funding by the company.
Wasn't there a case some years ago where Sears dragged a former employee to court, insisting that his product - (a wrench?) - was designed while he was employed by Sears, and they therefore owned the patent rights? I believe his argument was that he wasn't employed to design tools, that he did not use their facilities or their funds, and that therefore the patent was his alone.
Does anyone remember the case? What was the verdict?
Ascott -- your scenario is warped. The Sears employee dragged them into court and was awarded a substantial sum. This was late 60's stuff, according to my dimming memory.
The fact is that the law of intellectual property, patents and copyrights, desparately needs restructuring. Too much of it draws too heavily on the litigenous Thomas Edison, and is at least 100 years out of date. The protection afforded should reflect the benefit extended, and not merely a free ticket to all the free money you can take with a piece of authoritative paper. But it's part of a larger problem which involves shunning the exercise of judgment in favor of sloughing it off to a rule. We too often tie our own hands in the interest of advancing standard uniform practices. It isn't necessary to anything but the lining of pockets that an outcome be the same for a Bill Gates as for a Sears repairman. Virtually absolute rights of ownership is leading us to a world in which food itself is becoming controlled for the benefit of the "owner" of genetic architecture. ref: Monsanto Laws should be measured in terms of their effect on all people, not just The Owners.
Patents are another capitalist construct that benefits the people only when it is carefully regulated. The running delusion is that producers voluntarily self-regulate. But the giant producers generally don't self-regulate. They are beyond ethics. The situation has gradually deteriorated over the past several decades.
Even properly regulated patents still could not match freely flowing information in benefits to the people. Even if the capitalists played by the rules, the patents would still enhance capitalist accumulation, which the capitalist would eventually abuse in other ways, unless all capitalist activities were likewise regulated.
Fully tethered to their harnesses, and allowed some small level of property/profit rights, the capitalists may actually deliver a net benefit to the people. But when you let them run rampant and take over public policy, well you see the outcome of that today. The people are effectively paying 85% of their income in capitalist rents.
We can shift all of our exchange/association away from all the power centers. This covers the patent abuses as well as all of the abuses by concentrated power.
Inventions from research paid for by the taxpayers used NOT to be able to be patented by researchers, universities and drug companies. But that all changed in 1980 with the Stevenson-Wydler Act and the Bayh-Dole Act which together required federal laboratories to transfer technology to private industry, and permitted the recipients of federal grants to patent any resulting inventions.
Lots of things started changing back in 1980 but a whole lot of folks weren't paying attention. Why is/was that?
We hear this same theme over and over again. The billionaires have a right to trample on the billions of people down below. They have a right to allow them to be destroyed by disease and they have the right to starve them. They have the right to prevent them from having technology. Want to know why piracy is so high in China and Thailand? How would they have technology otherwise? Thailand copied the medicines and said, "Screw the US." It's about time. The poor nations also need to default altogether on all the stupid loans as well. Why put up with making billions for billionaires. They need to get together and copy the medicines they need and tell the US to butt out. The US wants to give people are hard time economically? China and Thailand could refuse to make anymore cheap goods for a month. What would that do to Walmart? They could literally bring this nation to its knees. What about those loans from China? Sorry Bush. No more loans. Get lost. Have any of you heard of the BRIC alliance headed by Russia? Couldn't we see this coming?
NIETSCHZE & BOB POMEROY: Good posts.
4THE FUTURE: I have a theory on why no one noticed the twist of laws to favor ownership over conscience/decency/public welfare, but it's based upon astrological cycles and I don't have time to now elaborate.
Modern health medicine and nutrition have traded one monster for another. And not just because they have traded synthetic for natural cures.
The last hundred years have created the current situation, wherein the relative health and nutrition (vitamins, calories) of the whole world has really become better, even in the Third World. But the world has remained with the old evolution-ingrained fertility rate, a rate that presumed a lot of early death for people, especially children and babies. WIth modern medicine and knowledge, the world population has now exploded to almost 7 billion people alive today. A success story that has now created another problem. How does the world feed and care for all these people, and how can they have meaningful, fulfilling and decent lives?
And third-world populations in particular have continued this expansion rate. As the rational people they are, they now wish to jettison their old useless traditions, which they are welcome to continue for free, for the reality-based modern medicines of science. As well they should, for they are thinking people, and they should have access to these tools that were for the most part created with American and other nations' tax dollars. So these medicines and health techniques should be socialized for the good of humanity.
But the people must be asked to jettison their old fertility traditions as well, or they will not be able to enjoy the extra life and happiness they will have, but will have to fight the mob for sustenance alone. The world is starting to do this today, with Americans having been just thrown into this dog-eat-dog struggle for scraps too now, by the flat-worlders and the transnational stateless masters and the owning and ruling classes.
Social Security first had a starting year which was the average life expectancy in the US. With modern medicine, it is now twenty to thirty years beyond that. (And the average life expectancy for people in non-modern countries was, and is still in some African countries, age 43.) And modern medicine has allowed many accident victims to live too, including many of the wounded American soldiers in Iraq, who would have died in any previous war. This is all to the good, but it has changed life without changing behavior.
If the old ways and old traditions and the old average lifespans were still the case, a whole lot of Europeans and Japanese and Americans would be gone today. And also, a whole lot of Third World folks would be gone as well, who have benefitted from the medicines they did get from the developed world.
The world needs a true localized socialism, wherein the political funcionaries of each nation truly care about their people for whom they work, and act accordingly. And each nation should help the others thrive and live in peace.
But a key to this is not simply 'money', which can be created at will and wired in seconds to any other place on the planet, nor medicine and technology either, which have no ethics or foresight in themselves. The keys are philosophy and real wisdom. It is cooperation and birth control and family planning, as well as modern medicines. Or all the good that modern science and medicine can do will be moot, as chaos and entropy multiplies to make the whole world spin out of contol and into utter destruction by the needs of exploding populations.
"The last hundred years have created the current situation, wherein the relative health and nutrition (vitamins, calories) of the whole world has really become better, even in the Third World."
I am not "jumping on", FVHorn May 23rd, 2008 12:10 pm; however, I don't think this statement will hold up to scrutiny.
In the relatively recent past (2-3 yrs. ago), a retiring 'Big Pharma' executive stated that either, 90% of the drugs made do not work for 50% of the people taking them or 50% of the drugs do not work for 90% of the people taking them. I don't remember, for sure, which % applies to which part of said statement; but either is pretty bad.