Ellen Hoen in her Ted Talk brilliantly brings up the need for companies to participate in the Medicines Patent Pool, where pharmaceutical patent holders voluntarily make their patents available to the Medicines Patent Pool which then license those out to whoever needs access to those patents. She brings up the example of anti retroviral medicines (ARVs) for AIDS treatment in the early 2000s when ARVs cost about $12,000 per patient per year. The patents on those drugs were held by a number of Western pharmaceutical companies that were not willing to make those patents available, causing patent wars to break out and an overall drug prices crisis to take place. Luckily, countries that didn't recognize pharmaceutical product patents product generic versions of these ARVs, dramatically lowering prices from $10,000 per patient per year to $350 to the current price of $60.
However, rules have changed where all countries are obliged to provide patents for pharmaceuticals that last at least 20 years and as new drugs are invented, a drug price crisis approaches closer once again. That is why the Medicines Patent Pool for HIV created by UNITAID in 2010 is critical to prevent cases where swaths of the world unable to afford high-priced patented medication are forced to suffer. The risk of this pool is the voluntary nature of it: these pharmaceutical companies are not obliged to participate within this pool and while the pool has been working so far, I believe it needs to be expanded. It shouldn't be just for HIV, but should be for a variety of diseases that afflict this world.
I believe the Medicines Patent Pool for HIV has been a great first step in addressing this issue, but I don't know the feasibility for its voluntary nature to continue to work in the long-run. I believe as new drugs for other diseases are produced and their value and need increases, these companies will be more so motivated in profits rather than contributing to the greater good. I believe in the long-run what we will need to do is to expand this pool and make it mandatory for pharmaceutical companies to throw their patents into. It is the only way to prevent these profit-seeking organizations from withholding medicine from those who need it the most.
Hi Rushil, great analysis of the Ellen Hoen case -- well done! It is crazy how the cost of antiretroviral has decreased so much where there no patents on them. This is a key step, I beleive, in transforming underdeveloped countries into developed countries and nations!
ReplyDeleteNice analysis of the Hoen lecture. I think this is well-organized and you did a great job of describing how the patent process has changed for antiretroviral drugs. Maybe you could add more of your own interpretation to the analysis but overall really nice work!
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