While reading Lessig’s conclusion on how patent law directly affects treatment of AIDS in Africa, it made me think of something I heard a few years back. In Spring of 2005, Brazil sent shock waves through the intellectual property world by threatening to start ignoring patents, especially with regards to pharmaceuticals. Earlier that year, they had already irritated higher ups at microsoft by supporting a computer literacy program for middle class families using open source software, but this drug issue took the cake for radical approaches to patent law. It made sense to Brazil that pharmaceutical companies should not be able to make billions upon billions by monopolizing drugs that are a. easy to produce, and b. in need. Developing nations which need money to tackle larger problems like infrastructure and poverty, which Lessig points out are more important factors in disease proliferation, cannot waste funds on licensing fees for drugs easy to duplicate. This is why the World IP Organization encourages to a certain extent, rights needed for sustainable development. I believe that Brazil tried to take advantage of this earlier by trying to declare AIDS a national emergency in oder legally get around producing generic drugs.
The counter argument of the pharmaceutical companies is of coarse, if their drugs were easily copied it would take away from their profit to a point where they could not fund research for new drugs. (In my eyes this is pretty weak) Its interesting though to think of the political implications going against intellectual property could cause, trade embargoes etc. Although Brazil never completely acted on their threats, they did get a lot of people ticked off. So the question remains, should or how much protection do developing nations deserve from patents?
I definitely see where the drug companies are coming from. Research and Development is expensive and despite the money you spend, the drug or treatment you end up producing might be a dud or could be held up by the FDA. However, I also remember hearing somewhere before, that the way that pharmaceutical companies research for these drugs is essentially by reversing the scientific method (i.e. I have a definite conclusion / result I want to reach, find me the process that’ll get me there), and that using this method could speed the process of development for a certain drug or treatment but at a very high cost.
This is, no doubt, a very problematic issue, but much more so in America, where our nationalism will kick in once we see perceived “hand-outs” given to foreign countries when plenty of people in the US could use those medicines as well (to their credit, the drug companies do have some drug affordability programs). one way we might be able to help developing countries gain access to patented medical treatment is to create a small section of the FDA that indexes the price of these drugs against the average standard of living of the country they’re sold in. That way, companies have a formal structure that (hopefully) will not be exploited by grandstanding politicians while at the same time allowing poorer countries to gain access to current and effective treatments.