Pharmaceutical patents

This has been a slashdot discussion that I really enjoyed reading.

It is concerned with the decision of Taiwan to ignore the Roche patent on Tamiflu, the vaccine regarded as being the most efficient one against the current bird flu epidemic.

Taiwan apparently tried to negotiate with Roche to be allowed to produce the vaccine themselves. Since these negotiations failed the country just decided to ignore the patent since it regarded the concern for the population as more important.

Some nice comments from the discussion:

What about less widespread, but equally fatal diseases? For example, why isn't it equally ethical for a country to ignore patent laws for cancer drugs? Why hasn't this already been done for AIDS drugs?

Should a lack of patent laws cause the death of people? Imagine that the entire world declared that for "serious disease" no one had to respect patent laws. Let's say that AIDS was declared such a disease. Would any more private sector research money (by far the most research money spent) go into finding a cure or better treatment for AIDS? Would anyone be able to write a business case to get venture money to start a new bio-tech firm looking at AIDS treatment?

If patent protection isn't required for drug development, where are the "open source" drugs? It only requires a few billion USD to develop drug lines... I'm sure there is plenty of non-profit, non-patent money to fund that, and so we can do away with the entire patent system.

An editorial in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, possibly the most authoritative source in the field, pointed out how drug companies spend far more money in marketing than they do in research. Also, drug companies often outsource the pure R&D to little-known laboratories, or buy patents from them, just to re-brand the products.

Btw, Taiwan can afford the drug. The amount of money in the corruption-fueled grey economy of corrupt officials is more than enough to buy the drugs. Just check out the world-wide corruption studies in The Economist for evidence. It's not about lack of money in Taiwan, but about priorities of spending (bribing MPs is more important than buying drugs - so break the patents).

I'll raise exactly one counter-example: Should fire departments be run as for-profit enterprises, and only purchase fire trucks in jurisdictions where they can make money charging for fire protection services? Drug research is high tech, but it is a question of public health and safety, and the fundamental decisions should be made with that in mind - so it is more like the fire department, and less like high end consumer electronics.

Do you know why Roche, and so many other pharmaceutical companies, are based in Switzerland? Because when they were founded there Switzerland had no intellectual property laws and did not recognize any such foreign laws. So Roche, Ciba, and the rest set themselves up in Switzerland ripping off patented formulas from the UK and elsewhere.

Roche is Swiss. I'm sure China, mainland or Taiwanese, quakes in fear at the thought of the Swiss navy launching an assault.

It did not really help me to come to a final conclusion concerning patents. I still feel they are utterly useless but I understand that there were reasons why such a system has been established.

But patents are definitely nothing more than a bunch of concepts, ideas and laws. In cases where this leads to people dying I believe there is not much need for discussions anymore.

Posted at: 10:27 | Permalink | category: /english/personal/news/science