Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - December 14, 2002
Supachai Panitchpakdi, the former deputy prime minister now heading the WTO, last weekend warned of "compassion discredit" if member states failed to meet the deadline. But the apparent lack of progress in ongoing talks in Geneva suggests his appeal to the consciences of member states has yet to sink in.
WTO trade ministers agreed in Doha last year to set aside international patent laws in order to give poorer countries access to the medicines they need to deal with emergencies. The ministers said crisis-hit countries could use the compulsory licences permitted them under the agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights to order their pharmaceutical industries to produce the necessary medicines, whether or not they are protected by patents.
But most developing countries cannot produce the medicines they need, and the system does not provide for the import or export of generic drugs. Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate for economics, has urged permission for producers to export generic drugs to such poor countries, and pointed out that the added demand from them would benefit the pharmaceutical industry in the long run.
In Geneva, WTO states have hit an impasse on the diseases that should be covered by the special access, and the countries that should benefit from it. The United States, under lobbying from a large pharmaceutical company, is said to be hardline on the issue of disease coverage. To the widely mentioned list of Aids, malaria, and tuberculosis, India is said to have sought the addition of cancer. Thailand's earlier push for vaccines seems to have sailed through. Two Asian states generally regarded as well-off are said to be among countries seeking access to cheap medicines.
Protection against opportunists is clearly a main concern in the debate. In approving in early October a plan to allow the export of medicines priced at as much as 80% less than normal, the European Commission urged producers to strengthen measures to ensure that discounted products "actually reach poor countries they are meant for". Some 72 countries in the developing world are due to benefit from this bid to help fight battles against Aids, malaria and TB.
Patent holders are entitled to be protective as it does take time, money and genius to develop medicines, and the world needs them to continue researching cures for deadly diseases. Also, patents for medicines do not enjoy the full 20 years of protection provided under Trips, since a newly patented medicine, unlike a newly patented mechanical invention, must go through clinical trials that could last 10 years before it can be sold. But pharmaceutical companies do enjoy fat profits, and should donate a fraction of that to help relieve public health emergencies. While governments might consider giving them incentives, the companies should not forget their moral obligation to a society that feeds them well.
Though quiet in the Geneva discussions, Thailand is facing a groundswell of activism against expensive drugs, with NGOs vocally critical of the government's failure to use Trips-friendly mechanisms to override patents. After Bristol-Myers Squibb came under court order to restore the milligramme limit to a patent on didanosine, the Aids drug, so that other producers could offer different doses, NGOs are now pushing for the revocation of the patent altogether.
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