The UK government refuses to support a World Health Organization initiative to encourage countries to share research on coronavirus treatments and produce any final medicines patent-free. This would mean they could be distributed fairly according to need. The proposal, a voluntary scheme that would pool knowledge, intellectual property and data about coronavirus health technologies, is not particularly radical. Two weeks ago, British officials attempted to water down a resolution at the World Health Assembly to create a global “patent pool”, which would have encouraged the production of patent-free coronavirus drugs. Then, on Friday, they declined to support the new WHO initiative for pooling research. Given the base of big pharma in the US and the UK, the withholding of support by industry and governments in these countries could easily scupper the WHO’s plans. The British government seems more interested in siding with big pharmaceutical corporations than turning vaccine research into a genuinely collective endeavour.
Pfizer called the proposal “nonsense”, while the big British companies working on coronavirus treatments, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKlein, refused to participate. When asked whether he would attend the launch of the WHO proposal, Thomas B Cueni, the director of the International Federation of Phamaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, a lobbying group, said he was “too busy”. Pharmaceutical companies have been careful to appear sympathetic to the need for “fair and equal access” to coronavirus treatments. Some, like AstraZeneca, have even pledged to supply vaccines at “cost price” during the pandemic. But with big pharma, each word needs to be carefully interrogated. As these companies have admitted, such pledges will have limited impact on the corporation’s profits because of vast public coronavirus subsidies.
Over the past three decades, big pharma has used its unparalleled lobbying muscle to secure market monopolies that vastly increase the power it holds over governments. Thanks to trade rules known as Trips (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) that were developed in the 90s to enforce minimum patent standards around the world, these corporations enjoy monopoly protection for new medicines they manufacture, allowing them to charge any price the market will endure.
These rules provide little incentive to produce the medicines desperately needed to treat illnesses common in low-income countries, such as sleeping sickness and cholera, but rather promote a narrow focus on drugs that mitigate chronic conditions common in the west, such as statins to treat high cholesterol. With chronic conditions, big pharmaceutical companies can sell the same medicines to the same patients for years, or even decades. Vaccines – designed to prevent diseases – are often used only once, and therefore don’t tend to be as profitable.
Governments have poured phenomenal sums of money into drug development to stimulate essential medical research that patents have failed to incentivise. But this money rarely comes with any strings attached, allowing pharmaceutical companies to monopolise the resulting medicines. A recent study estimated that one contender for a coronavirus treatment, a hepatitis C medication produced by the pharma giant Gilead, costs $5 per course to produce. The academics who authored the study said the drug is currently on sale in the US for more than $18,000 per treatment course.
Despite the fact coronavirus medicines will be discovered using vast sums of public money, like the UK government’s £500m of coronavirus research funding, the NHS may still have to pay through the nose for any final product, while poorer countries could be unable to access the drug. It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. In the 90s, millions died unnecessarily in the Aids crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, because the medicines to treat HIV were out of reach of most people. The WHO’s initiative launched on Friday is intended to avert a repeat of this. Many countries support it including Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Norway, Portugal and Belgium. But for the British government, the patent system is sacrosanct. The UK seems desperate not to upset its own pharmaceutical corporations or the financial sector that makes substantial returns from these companies, which spend more money on share buybacks than on researching drugs.
When it comes to the crunch, pharmaceutical companies treat healthcare as a commodity, not a right.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/02/coronavirus-vaccine-uk-big-pharma
Pfizer called the proposal “nonsense”, while the big British companies working on coronavirus treatments, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKlein, refused to participate. When asked whether he would attend the launch of the WHO proposal, Thomas B Cueni, the director of the International Federation of Phamaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, a lobbying group, said he was “too busy”. Pharmaceutical companies have been careful to appear sympathetic to the need for “fair and equal access” to coronavirus treatments. Some, like AstraZeneca, have even pledged to supply vaccines at “cost price” during the pandemic. But with big pharma, each word needs to be carefully interrogated. As these companies have admitted, such pledges will have limited impact on the corporation’s profits because of vast public coronavirus subsidies.
Over the past three decades, big pharma has used its unparalleled lobbying muscle to secure market monopolies that vastly increase the power it holds over governments. Thanks to trade rules known as Trips (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) that were developed in the 90s to enforce minimum patent standards around the world, these corporations enjoy monopoly protection for new medicines they manufacture, allowing them to charge any price the market will endure.
These rules provide little incentive to produce the medicines desperately needed to treat illnesses common in low-income countries, such as sleeping sickness and cholera, but rather promote a narrow focus on drugs that mitigate chronic conditions common in the west, such as statins to treat high cholesterol. With chronic conditions, big pharmaceutical companies can sell the same medicines to the same patients for years, or even decades. Vaccines – designed to prevent diseases – are often used only once, and therefore don’t tend to be as profitable.
Governments have poured phenomenal sums of money into drug development to stimulate essential medical research that patents have failed to incentivise. But this money rarely comes with any strings attached, allowing pharmaceutical companies to monopolise the resulting medicines. A recent study estimated that one contender for a coronavirus treatment, a hepatitis C medication produced by the pharma giant Gilead, costs $5 per course to produce. The academics who authored the study said the drug is currently on sale in the US for more than $18,000 per treatment course.
Despite the fact coronavirus medicines will be discovered using vast sums of public money, like the UK government’s £500m of coronavirus research funding, the NHS may still have to pay through the nose for any final product, while poorer countries could be unable to access the drug. It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. In the 90s, millions died unnecessarily in the Aids crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, because the medicines to treat HIV were out of reach of most people. The WHO’s initiative launched on Friday is intended to avert a repeat of this. Many countries support it including Argentina, Mexico, South Africa, Norway, Portugal and Belgium. But for the British government, the patent system is sacrosanct. The UK seems desperate not to upset its own pharmaceutical corporations or the financial sector that makes substantial returns from these companies, which spend more money on share buybacks than on researching drugs.
When it comes to the crunch, pharmaceutical companies treat healthcare as a commodity, not a right.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/02/coronavirus-vaccine-uk-big-pharma
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