E-drug: Investors pressure drug firms on pricing (cont'd)
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What is also at stake in this patent question is not only the price and
access issue - because here we are speaking on only one but critical
part of problems, but as well the R and D issue.
Developing countries are expecting from the pharmaceutical industry:
(i) to deliver affordable life-saving medicines because most of the
time the R and D investment - not so high and huge as claimed
traditionally by the pharmaceutical industry, with the symbolic but
false figure, such as US$ 800 million by new chemical entity, spread
by pharmaceutical industry - are usually quick to yield a profit;
(ii) but above all to deliver new, and field- and needs-adapted
innovative products through their R and D activities.
We already observed in the past that the reality was quite different: a
low level of innovation despite exorbitant R-D expenditures claimed
but never evidenced by pharmaceutical industry, and a lack of
interest for the so-called unprofitable diseases.
As long as the pharmaceutical industry does not understand that
nowadays a patent means not only economic implications (return on
investment and profit), but more and more a social and implicit
contract between the industry and the society - ie to get a result
through new and innovative products in response to population needs
and not me-too drugs or multiple life-style drugs, pharmaceutical
industry will be completely mistaken.
If pharmaceutical industry is incapable of changing or getting the
picture, it is time to transform the implicit contract in an explicit one in
for instance rewarding only products that are valuable for the society,
through an infinitely variable patent scheme.
Dr Patrice Trouiller
Technical adviser
Ministry of Health
Antananarivo, Madagascar
e-mail: pattrouiller@wanadoo.fr
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