Large drugs companies spend lots of money developing and researching drugs. When they discover a new drug, a patent is taken out meaning that only that company has the right to produce or sell the drug, usually for a fixed period of time. After this time has expired, the knowledge is made available to other pharmaceutical companies when a generic drug is made, which is incidentally usually cheaper in cost to produce. A generic drug is marketed either under a non-proprietary or approved name rather than a proprietary or brand name.
According to Oxfam, the US is at the vanguard of patent protection for pharmaceutical industries. Due to the cost of research and development, so the US argues, extended patents are the only way to permit pharmaceutical companies to recoup this vast cost. This also leaves the US and the World Trade Organization open to charges of protectionism since the cost of patented drugs is often so prohibitive that health care providers in the developing world are unable to afford them to tackle illnesses such as AIDS. This obviously has desperate implications for the developing world.
After anthrax scares in the US post September 11, the anti-anthrax drug Cipro produced by German company Bayer was in high demand but the supply was limited by its patent. Faced with an anthrax scare and much media hysteria, the US government threatened Bayer by saying it would allow American companies to produce the drug Cipro cheaply despite patents. This resulted in Bayer agreeing to sell the drug to the US at about half of its usual price.
An ethical issue:
Should companies be able to hold the patents to medicines when lives are at stake? And what of the role of developed countries who first support the rights of pharmaceutical companies but quickly change their minds when they themselves are in trouble?
Sources:
healthgap.org
Oxfam
choike.org
Paper: Patents, International Trade Law and Access to Essential Medicines
