The rampant proliferation of patents is putting lives at risk.
Uninsured cancer patients, for instance, are often forced to interrupt their treatment because they can no longer incur the exorbitant expense. The government is largely responsible for this tragedy, since there are solutions to the problem of access to affordable medicines even within the strict confines of the IMF memorandum.
For example, the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) permits countries to issue compulsory licenses of patented products[i]. Using this provision of international law, which has also been invoked by Germany and Italy among others, Greece can obtain anticancer and other drugs at much cheaper prices from producers of generics, while bypassing entirely legitimately the patents held by pharmaceutical multinationals. Another solution is the pooled procurement of medicines, whereby a group of countries could collectively negotiate with pharmaceutical companies in order to obtain better prices for much needed medicines.
Undertaking such actions is the bare minimum any responsible government faced with a health crisis ought to do. For SYRIZA the benchmark stands higher. As the main opposition party in Greece fighting for an EU that serves peoples’ needs rather than multinationals’ interests, we ought to push the envelope further by challenging the current funding regime for pharmaceutical research. As it stands, the existing regime boosts the profitability of a few companies while excluding millions of patients from access to affordable medicines. A socially equitable Europe requires a completely new paradigm.
Alternatives to funding pharmaceutical innovation
Today funding of research on new drugs is based on intellectual property rights that legally enshrine the monopoly of pharmaceutical companies on the medicines they develop. In essence, the company that has created a drug is the only one allowed to sell it, and it does so by setting the price as high as it likes. The claim made by the pharmaceutical industry that this is the only way to cover the high costs of research is nothing more than a pretext for the corporate profiteering that today endangers human lives. In fact the price of cancer drugs has doubled over the last decade, despite furious reactions by doctors and patients’ associations[ii].
The patent system results in prohibitive costs for patients and immense bills for healthcare providers. Furthermore it incentivizes the development of drugs of questionable efficacy, it gives rise to aggressive and often misleading marketing practices and it excludes the wider scientific community from further research. All in all, the current system for funding pharmaceutical innovation is blatantly unfair, wasteful and inefficient and it undermines the health rights of Greek and European citizens.
In search for an alternative, the crucial point is to delink the incentives for research and development from the high prices of patented medicines. This can be achieved through the establishment of a Prize Fund for Pharmaceutical Innovation financed by contributions from EU member states. Such a Fund will directly reward research programs based on healthcare results and the furthering of research for the benefit of patients. Having been compensated for the cost of developing new drugs, pharmaceutical companies will compete openly with producers of generics in the free market. This will result in substantial price deflation and a much better allocation of resources. Market authorization for all products will naturally be subject to strict oversight by EU and national authorities in order to observe quality standards.
It is not unheard of. Under pressure from patients’ groups, medical professionals and health activists, such proposals have been put forward since more than a decade. They have been deliberated in committees of the World Health Organization and are part of legislative bills brought to the US Congress[iii]. The proposed system is clearly fairer, cheaper and more effective. The only reason it is not being implemented is the extra-institutional influence of the pharmaceutical industry.
The demand for an EU that prioritizes patients’ rights to medicines over companies’ rights to monopolies has always been self evident. Today, in the midst of a health crisis, it is more pertinent than ever. From Greece, where they are literally fighting for their lives, the patients’ call should be heard across Europe: Human rights above intellectual property rights!
Intellectual property versus access to knowledge
Health is perhaps the most critical, but not the only public domain upon which large corporations exercise control through intellectual property rights. Over the past years the rampant proliferation of intellectual property in a host of varying fields, from seeds to software through to cultural works and all sorts of scientific accomplishments, signifies nothing less than the appropriation of the products of human creativity and the lawful exclusion of society from its most valuable asset in the age of information: free access to knowledge.
In an interconnected world the potential for cultural and scientific innovation is greatly increased through synthesis on an entirely new scale. In order to profit from the plethora of products of collective creativity, multinational corporations must restrict their availability. For society to benefit in the truest sense, they should be accessible to all. This emerges as one of the great political conflicts of the early 21st century.
Advocates of intellectual property rights overlook the fact that in science, as in art, there is no such thing as parthenogenesis. The quintessence of human progress is to copy and modify previous works in order to improve them. After all, great scientific achievements are rarely the result of profit oriented research. More often they originate from individuals or groups driven by humanitarian or intellectual motives who freely experiment with the works of their predecessors. A case in point today is the global free software community developing innovative and reliable products pro bono, while capitalizing on existing knowledge without restrictions. The same was true in the 17th century when Isaac Newton, after winning acclaim for the law of universal gravitation, gave credit to Galileo and Kepler saying: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.
The momentum of human progress is today accelerated and democratized by the development of information sharing technologies. This momentum is confronted by large multinationals intent on exploiting, controlling and manipulating it through lobbying for stricter and wider legislation on intellectual property. Within the EU, where the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership threatens to institutionalize corporatocracy, it is necessary to counter-propose the totally feasible and certainly beneficial vision of an ecosystem of innovation and creativity where access to knowledge will be governed by principles of freedom, justice and equality.