[e-drug] Pharmaceutical firms attacked over drug patents (3)

[Ingrid Cox <ingrid.cox@geneva.msf.org>]

E-drug: Pharmaceutical firms attacked over drug patents (3)
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[Copied as fair use. HH]

US attacked over drug patents protection
By Frances Williams in Geneva
22 May 22 2003 22:04

Health campaigners on Thursday attacked a US attempt to enlist
World Health Organisation support for stronger patent protection
for medicines, claiming it would push up drug prices in poor
countries. 

A US resolution to the WHO annual assembly that opened in
Geneva this week urges members to promote pharmaceutical
research and development by boosting incentives for industry,
including better patent and data protection. New medicines,
vaccines and diagnostics accounted for 40 per cent of the increase
in life expectancy between 1986 and 2000, the US claims. 

However, campaign groups such as M?decins sans Fronti?res
(MSF) and Oxfam say patents have little or no impact on research
into diseases of the poor, an argument backed by the UK's expert
commission on intellectual property rights. In its report last year it
concluded that intellectual property (IP) "hardly plays any role at all"
in stimulating research, except for diseases with a large market in
the industrialised world. 

"Of the 1,393 new drugs approved between 1975 and 1999, only
16 (or just over 1 per cent) were specifically developed for tropical
diseases and tuberculosis, diseases that account for 11.4 per cent
of the global disease burden," 10 non-governmental organisations
said yesterday, accusing the US of "an almost blind belief in the IP
system". 

The US resolution stands little chance of success at the assembly
as most of the WHO's 192 members are developing countries. But
opponents have been particularly dismayed that the resolution
makes no reference to negotiations in the World Trade
Organisation to allow poor nations to import generic copies of
patented drugs in case of need.
 
"The US has broken every promise made concerning developing
countries' right to access low-cost generic medicines. . . and is
using the world health assembly to champion monopoly protections
on life-saving drugs," Brook Baker, of US-based Health GAP, said
on Thursday. 

The WTO negotiations have been stalled since the US blocked a
deal last December that all other WTO members were prepared to
support. Harvey Bale, director-general of the International
Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations
(IFPMA), said on Thursday the patent-based industry saw the
December deal as a "licence to steal".

In a report on Thursday, MSF said poor countries were granting
more patents on medicines than necessary under WTO rules
because they lacked the expertise to judge whether a patent
application was justified. 
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