Drug Patents Are Important

Protecting drug patents is an important effort in the global fight against disease. By protecting drug patents, the creators of these drugs can obtain a window to recoup the massive financial investment of creating a new medication. Without that opportunity to make a profit, the drug companies simply cannot afford to develop new medications. According to the following statement made in The Financial Times, Miles White, CEO of Abbot Laboratories:

“Today, creating a single new medication costs, on average, about $1bn. That massive funding comes from one source alone: private investors. Without a promise of return on that investment – ‘the fuel of interest’ - that funding will go elsewhere, to opportunities that are less vital and less risky. And that is a risk our world cannot live with and cannot allow.”

According to the FDA, the prices of generics here in the United States are actually cheaper than their generic or rebranded Canadian counterparts. The argument that strong drug patent protection makes it more costly for other countries to develop medicines does not always hold water.

Furthermore, some diseases, like AIDS, continue to develop and evolve over time. The medications that are designed to treat these diseases must be able to be adapted over time as well. If it costs up to a billion dollars in R&D to develop a single medication, then there is also a substantial cost to updating that medication. When drug patents are left unprotected we run the risk of the pharmaceutical researchers not having the resources to keep up with the changing disease.

One recent example of the damaging misuse of pharmaceutical patents were the moves of the Thailand government abusing the TRIPS arrangement by the WTO to create their own version of the aids drug Kaltera in early 2007. In extreme circumstances, compulsory licenses are granted to countries that have a state of emergency. However, it should be used as a last resort. In this particular instance, the Thai government refused an offer from The Global Fund for a free supply of a generic version of Efavirenz. After refusing the offer, the Thai government had the state sponsored pharmaceutical company Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO) create their own version of the drug. One can easily see that the Thailand government had more interest in helping out one of its subsidiaries rather than its people.

By: James Njoroge

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James is a former journalist and comments on science and technology issues touching on the developing world. Topics covered by Pharmaceutical News 2.0 include drug patents , pharmaceutical patents , compulsory licensing, access to medicine, biopiracy, essential medicines and more.