Reuters – Thu 25 Jan 2007 8:58:13 GMT:
Thailand’s army-installed government has issued compulsory licences for cheap versions of a heart disease and an AIDS drug, the health minister said on Thursday, a move likely to enrage global pharmaceutical giants.
“The laws have been signed and they are now effective,” Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla told Reuters.
Mongkol said the drugs were for treatment of HIV-AIDS and heart disease, but declined to confirm newspaper reports they were Abbott’s
Kaletra, and Plavix, a blockbuster anti-clotting agent sold by Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb . He cited the ballooning costs of treatment as the reason for the move.
“We have to do this because we have so many patients to treat with so little budget. We can’t watch our people die and their patents have been here for so long,” Mongkol said.
“It’s very, very worrying when companies’ intellectual property rights are not supported within a country,” said Judy Benn, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand.
Topic of the day, what is a government’s primary duty: Protecting the life of its citizens or the intellectual property of foreign corporations?
If IP don’t license the technology at affordable rates, screw them.
I think countries have to protect their citizens, but the companies and the people that work for them are also citizens. However until he “citizens” within companies start taking a wider view, then governments should protect the majority citizens first. Of course if you live in the US, protecting big companies (donations???) is most important
Just remember profits fund research. I’m not stating that the pharms are wonderful altruistic entities, but what do you think will be cut first, dividends or R&D.
Boo-friggin’-hoo. Hmm… Save lives? Make money? Save lives? Make money?
I think we all know where big business’ priorities lie.
Someone throw me a friggin’ bone here.
A huge part of the research comes from government funding. Most of their money goes to advertising. Also: re intellectual property rights, think the pharms are ever so willing to compensate the Amazonian tribes where they get a lot of material?
Got to laugh when people say the markets solve everything: billions for research for viagra, nuttin’ for a malaria vaccine.
5. “Got to laugh when people say the markets solve everything…”
The market doesn’t work here because governments have been handing out virtual monopolies like candy, i.e., patents. You can’t praise the free market and at the same time hand out monopolies.
Get rid of patents and let a real free market take its course.
Maybe there’s hope for a possible cancer cure that’s apparently effective against all forms of cancer (!!!!) but not being pursued by Big Pharma, because it’s no longer protected by a patent.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10971
http://www.lewrockwell.com/walker/walker24.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi68.html
What I think Big Pharma will do is to create lookalike molecules that can be patented and do the same job, so that they can be sold for small fortunes to desperate people.
Way to Go, Thailand!
I think think that besides the oil industry the pharmaceutical industry might be the greediest industry in existence. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m some sort of communist but I think that if you are in an industry which is about saving lives and decreasing pain, perhaps profit shouldn’t be one of your concerns.
THis is one of those situations where the corporations are trying to make this an issue about lost profits. In reality it is that the vast majority of these people could never afford these drugs so the company would never sell these drugs to people in the first place. So this situation is much more similar to piracy than anything else. If they had to pay for the product most people wouldn’t get it.
#3
“Just remember profits fund research. I’m not stating that the pharms are wonderful altruistic entities, but what do you think will be cut first, dividends or R&D.”
Why not cut the advertising budget? It’s almost as big as R&D.
What’s really wrong here is that the patent system of rewarding research exacts a huge cost in terms of human lives. We need a different approach that rewards R&D while not economically witholding life-saving treatments.
Under the current system, both sides have valid arguments; so let’s change the system to one that would be more humane.
At the end of the day, intellectual property rights is all the United States economy is going to have left to export. If they remain this easy to pilfer, our future balance of trade looks bleak.
IP = money & money = drugs & drugs = life & life = r&d & r&d = IP
its cyclical
So the new morality is steal what you want if it’s for a good cause and you have the power?
Why not just globally socialize the entire pharma industry, after all, we have all the drugs we’ll ever need.
Because heaven knows, there won’t be any new ones.
12. “So the new morality is steal what you want if it’s for a good cause and you have the power?”
The pharmaceuticals were protected by government granted monopolies, aka, patents. No where is it written that any sovereign nation has to create, grant, or enforce patents.
And even in the us, infringing patents is not stealing. When you “steal” you deprive the owner the right to sell, destroy, lease, enjoy the use of, etc, over land or an object. Property laws developed because of the scarcity of land and of objects.
In the realm of IP there is absolutely no scarcity. so the only thing keeping everyone from using an idea is the government granting of monopolies.
You may think patents are a good thing. That’s fine for you. Yippie! But you’re not a sovereign nation, so you have absolutely no ability to grant such monopolies, thus, your opinions really don’t matter squat.
I’ll end with this: If a government has the right to choose to grant monopolies, it has the right not to do the same!
Stealing patents sounds like a good idea, but it also means there’s very little property rights in your own country, so very few people will try to invest in property there, or develop the property they have. Thailand is writing itself a path to perpetual poverty.
Drug industry likes to say that they may big bucks because they “save lives”, so I looked at the top ten drugs listed. Three of them (advair, zyprexa, and risperdal) have had reports that they actually result in increased deaths. A number of the top 10 drugs are really no better than generics (prevacid, nexium, norvasc, effexor). #1 selling Lipitor lowers cholesterol great, but it has never been shown to save lives as has #2 Plavix. The only drug that can claim to save lives on the top ten list is Zocor, and it has the worst side effect profile of all the cholesterol pills.
We can’t watch our people die and their patents have been here for so long,” Mongkol said. There is no doubt the AIDS drugs prolong life, but outside of that, it is amazing to me that the drug companies have even convinced the people stealing from them of the so called benefits of their products.
#13, SN
An extremely powerful statement. I don’t know if you took that explanation of IP from a textbook or made it up, but I found it very illuminating.
While I do favor some IP protection, I grant your post is a very powerful argument.
#15, jz
Another powerful argument. In my opinion, substance will always win over blather.
I would love to be contacted by Murray to hear more firsthand info about the Thai situation. And perhaps to invite Murray to do a guest blog entry on our blog at http://www.policybytes.org
tomg@ipi.org
I live in Thailand and agree with Murray.
I would wagers millions of dollars that this patent grab has nothing to with helping the poor of Thailand–even though there is a long tradition of taking advantage and stealing from foreigners in the cause of a nationalist, right-wing agenda.
One has to wonder how it is possible that the Thai government can afford a huge increase in its defense budget yet can’t afford drugs for its people.
And how is it that billions of dollars are stolen from Thailand’s coffers every year through corruption, e.g. brand new airport, and the money passed onto generals and top bureaucrats who own Mercedes and mansions, yet the state has money for medicine?
And in a country with so many billionaires, how come there is not one foundation set up by any of them to fund medicine for the poor?
Thais have a long history of screwing foreigners, and this is just one more incidence of it.
By the way, these Thai pharm companies who are going to steal this intellectual property are going to turn around and shamelessly sell it to their own people and other countries for a profit.
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