Drugs giants refuse to shoulder AIDS blame

The pharmaceutical industry has had a bad press for years on patents - and things are not getting any better.

An Oxfam report in November hit the industry in one of its most vulnerable spots - access to medicines for the world’s poorest people. Despite all the talk about changes to the oft-cited TRIPS agreement, "patented medicines continue to be priced out of reach for the world’s poorest people", the report said.

It cites the 2001 Doha Declaration on "the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights and public health", with its aim to help poor countries obtain cheaper generic products to compete with patented medicines. And it claims that rich countries have failed to honour their promises.

Oxfam also accuses the US of continuing to circumvent TRIPS and of seeking ever-higher levels of intellectual property protection in developing countries, in response to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry and with the tacit connivance of EU member states.

The drug industry has a well-rehearsed routine for refuting such accusations - and that is what the Geneva-based International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) deployed last week. Access to medicines is not the major issue affecting health in the developing world: it is poverty and lack of infrastructure, it stated. Nor is intellectual property a major obstacle to access to needed medicines: very few of the World Health Organization’s own list of essential medicines are patented, the industry association pointed out. "And where essential medicines are still under patent, such as some anti-retrovirals for treating AIDS/HIV, manufacturers make them available in developing countries at cost, below cost, or even for free," it claimed. In addition, runs the industry argument, the availability of generic versions of complex, modern medicines does not equate to adequate access, because poor countries simply cannot afford them.

Instead, IFPMA focuses on vigorous promotion of industry-friendly conditions across the world. Protection of innovation, it argues, will fuel the growth and economic development that will allow countries to escape the poverty that underlies ill-health, and produce the new medicines for as yet untreatable or incurable conditions.

The European Union changed its own rules last April to allow the export of patented medicines to countries in need, in line with the Doha Declaration - to acclaim from Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson. This has not averted the attacks either. Last week (1 December) the European Parliament called for fundamental changes to the TRIPs agreements so as to cut the costs of anti-HIV drugs. MEPs also criticised the Commission for inaction and the pharmaceutical industry for avarice and indifference.

No matter how powerfully the industry argues, it remains tainted by the spectacle of widespread disease in poor countries - hampering its case whenever it argues on any aspect of patents. The industry in Europe faces repeated delays and deficiencies in implementation of the 1998 directive on biotechnology patents, suffers particularly from legal uncertainty over intellectual property rights for new therapies, and is exposed to serious gaps in trademark and patent coverage as Europe enlarges. But it finds it hard to win sympathy for its efforts to obtain remedies.

As pro-innovation German MEP Jorgo Chatzimarkakis admits: "It frequently appears that an incomplete and/or wrong understanding of the way the patent system works seriously affects the perception of the patent system."

The misunderstanding is likely to persist as long as patents are seen as obstacles to access to medicines rather than as keys to the emergence of new therapies. That is a misunderstanding that the drug industry itself will have to become more effective at dispelling.

The pharmaceutical industry has had a bad press for years on patents - and things are not getting any better.