Not the forum for proven failures
Essential Innovation
Comment on “Not the forum for proven failures”
By Dr. Kristina M Lybecker
April 30th, 2008 10:58 am
At the heart of the World Health Organization’s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (IGWG) are two vital goals: increased pharmaceutical research and development, especially on neglected diseases, and enhanced access to future and existing medicines for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. Both are essential to greater public health. Admittedly, there is some tension between achieving both goals.
Pharmaceutical research is a difficult, risky and serendipitous process. Not surprisingly, firms are motivated by sales and profits and are only willing to continue to invest when they believe the risk is balanced by the potential returns. As such, it is essential to continue to provide them with an incentive to invest. The existing system has been exceedingly successful in this regard, having produced the life-saving medicines we benefit from today.
Given that, the IGWG should focus on mechanisms that complement the existing system, rather than engineering a replacement to the current intellectual property rights regime. This is particularly true in the context of enhancing access to medicines for the world’s poor. Millions of patients in the developing world have no access to drugs, not even generic drugs. Moreover, every year millions of people in the developing world die of diseases easily cured with inexpensive drugs. Clearly this goes beyond patents and the pharmaceutical industry’s pricing models. Poverty, corruption, taxes and tariffs constitute significant barriers, left unaddressed by the IGWG Draft Strategy.
Essential Action seems to have embraced the abandonment of the existing system, removing the incentives for future research. Although they support prizes to incentivize R&D, calling them “simple and compelling proposals”, they fail to acknowledge the inherent difficulties of utilizing prizes in drug development and ignore alternative mechanisms that may better complement the existing system. Although Essential Action believes prizes to be “simple”, in reality they may only be used when it is possible to accurately and fully describe the details of the desired innovation in advance. In addition, while a prize may stimulate the research, it would not ensure the availability of the treatment. Given the difficulty of the manufacturing process, especially vaccines and biopharmaceuticals, even patents available in the public domain may not ensure production.
Finally, Essential Action seems to discount the alternative mechanisms that may better complement the existing system. Public-private partnerships and advance market commitments are but two of those available. Efforts to address the diseases missing from the industry’s research agenda should encompass all available options and take advantage of those available that complement the global patent system. The existing system of intellectual property rights stimulated the medical breakthroughs that are currently both extending and enhancing life for patients. It is difficult to believe that we will be better served by eliminating the incentives for research and drug development.
Dr. Kristina M Lybecker
Department of Economics & Business
Colorado College
Colorado Springs, Colorado
http://www.essentialinnovation.org/wordpress/?p=229
Not the forum for proven failures
Posted by Juliano Froehner
A colleague in the United States sent me this interesting article from a publication called Fast Company. The article is about the usefulness of innovation prizes, a favorite topic among some in the anti-IP camp pitched outside of the World Health Organization. As a balanced article, it gives the activists space to make their pitch, but ultimately concludes that a prize is little more than a PR campaign. While these contests can deliver feats, characteristic of all winning “inventions” is that none are commercially viable.
Tell that to the patients praying for advancements in therapy. Meanwhile, every successful treatment in use today in the fight against HIV/AIDS was developed under patent protection. Advocates of prizes over patents – an example of a proven model for delivering results to patients – should be ashamed of the zealousness of their advocacy. The result in the innovation game is life or death. This is not the forum for proven failures.
