Several studies have shown that this is not the case. On the contrary, investment in R&D has never been so low, whilst billions are invested in marketing. Pharma live on evergreening and repackaging.

Myth 2: Middle income country like Thailand and Brazil can afford to pay for life-saving medicine

So why is the US the first country in the world when it comes to the number of compulsory license issued ranging from auto and aircraft par to the Blackberry which are far from being life saving?

Myth 3: The public and tax-payer benefit from the profit made by the Pharma

Most Pharma escape high level taxation they should be submitted to by registering office offshore.

Truth number one: Pharma are no the slave of politician.

True. Politicians are on the payroll of Pharma!

For a different point of view on this subject read:

Wealth versus health – the Thai frontier
http://tinyurl.com/2z2sjg

The cost of going through phase 2, then to human trials, FDA approval, etc. is extremely expensive and extremely technical. They could “give” this IP away, but generics firms don’t have the technical capacity or financial ability to cover the costs. You’d still be left with high costs.

In addition, who gets held responsible if things go wrong?

There was a suggestion a few years back of creating a UN fund that would guarantee a fixed price for the treatments to specialised illnesses (to some extent what the Gate Foundation is up to). It doesn’t seem to have amounted to much, but it is a damn site better idea that “forcing” pharmaceuticals firms to work for free.

I’m actually not suggesting that all the big pharmaceutical companies should be forced to give away their IP – I consider that an illegal “taking” of property by the government, something that’s unconstitutional here in the US. But I am suggesting that drug companies should be forced to make available, at nominal prices, drugs that they’re keeping off the market because the drug’s not a Viagra(TM) or a Lipitor(TM). Drugs for diseases that primarily affect the poor aren’t marketed or developed because the profit margin isn’t big enough.

Letting millions of people die from malaria when there’s a cheap but not-profitable drug sitting on the shelf is immoral. If someone else can manufacture the drug cheaper than the drug’s developer can, then that someone else should have the opportunity to do so, and before the 20 year patent expiration.

I’m not saying that the discoverer of the drug should give that drug away, but they shouldn’t sit on it either. There has to be a way to license that drug from it’s developer in a way that enables them to meet their development costs (or at least defray them) and still saves lives before the patent runs out. A lot of what’s going on with the Gates Foundation is exactly this model, and it seems to be working reasonably well.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6927814.stm

Finally!

As I said: “It is fair comment to demand that those who are responsible for causing an illness take responsibility for fixing the ill they cause.” At least you can sue a company that profits from a product that causes harm.

The “harm” by the by, is caused by some very unusual properties of chemicals. Partly it is the result of chirality (the “handedness” or twist of a chemical where a subtle difference, not in it’s chemical makeup but in its twist can produce terrible effects – thalidamide is a good example of this). The other is now being realised as the genetic makeup of the person receiving the drug. Quite a few of the recent drugs that have been recalled have had this problem. The drugs work perfectly, but only on a specific genetic family.

With all this try and imagine what happens when you “give” the IP to some generics manufacturer?

A new contradiction gets introduced. You don’t trust the drug majors, but you do trust the generics manufacturers? At least the person who introduces and patents a drug has to go through the FDA for approval.

Generics manufacturers don’t have to as long as they can prove that their compound is chemically similar to the original. But – as I point out above – chemically similar doesn’t mean identical, and doesn’t even mean the same action in all cases.

Picking up on the side-effects is as much an R&D function as the original research. Who is going to do it if the drug majors can’t afford to after having been forced to give their original IP away?

Be careful, though – some of your points are wrong. There have recently been a number of examples where drug companies’ products have made people sick, so your blanket “Pharmaceuticals companies do not cause people to get sick.” is patently inaccurate.

I can’t fault your conclusion that Oxfam could probably do a lot more good buying and distributing medicines directly than bitching about pharmaceutical companies.

Jeff