E-drug: Pharmaceutical firms attacked over drug patents (1)
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Group: Patents Making Drugs Too Expensive
By Naomi Koppel
The Associated Press, Thursday 22 May 2003
GENEVA - Poor countries are granting more patents on medicines
than necessary, making crucial drugs far too costly for them, the
humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said in a report
Thursday.
Many developing countries do not have the scientific expertise to
decide whether a patent is justified, so they grant protection even
when it is not required under international law, the report said.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that drugs that are under patent
are a barrier to access because this leads to higher prices," said
Ellen 't Hoen, of the group's campaign for access to essential
medicines. "Drug patents can and should be challenged."
Inventors must apply for patents individually in each country where
they want to obtain protection. Without a patent, there would be
nothing to stop a generic manufacturer from copying the process
used to make a drug.
Pascale Boulez, one of the authors of the report, said that poor
nations simply grant patents without carrying out investigations.
Many West African countries granted patent protection to
GlaxoSmithKline's AIDS treatment Combivir within a couple of
years of its 1997 filing, while the European Union is still studying
the application.
"Patents were not created to enrich inventors, but to benefit society
as a whole by promoting innovation," the report said.
Harvey Bale, director-general of the International Federation of
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations, said patents are
necessary even in developing countries to promote research and
development of new drugs.
"Why should you throw out the patent system? That is a very
short-term, static view which is very typical of some of the
activists," he said. "That would be a respectable view if you were at
the end of the history of drug development. But I don't know a
single therapy where we are at the end of history."
He said patent holders can often supply the drugs to poor nations
more cheaply than generic producers because they have larger
production and distribution systems and can make profits by selling
the same drugs at higher prices elsewhere.
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