Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
most significant determinant of drug prices (Caves
et al. 1991; abbott 2002; correa
2002). this is because patents give market exclusivity for particular periods, during
which time medicine prices are not subject to the downward pressures of market
competition. Pharmaceutical product prices fall sharply when generic entry occurs
following the expiration of patents (Scherer 2000, 1322-1324).
Global Governance for Access to medicines
Despite the scale of need for medicines in developing countries, the response of
international organisations and government has been inadequate and weak. to some
extent this is due to the legally entrenched privileges of pharmaceutical companies
under the World Trade Organization's (wto) agreement on trade-related aspects
of Intellectual Property (trIPS). the trIPS agreement requires 20-year patents
for pharmaceuticals, which give exclusive rights to prevent non-consensual use,
subject to extensive domestic and international enforcement including at the
wto's dispute settlement mechanism. It does provide exceptions to patenting
and limitations on exclusivity in the interests of public health and social welfare,
including parallel imports and compulsory licensing. compulsory licensing, for
example, allows governments to manufacture generic versions of patented medicines
without corporate consent in certain circumstances, including for government use,
in national emergency, or as a remedy for anti-competitive practice, or whenever
a voluntary licence has been refused. these are, however, highly conditional
grants, and licensees must pay adequate remuneration and production must be
predominantly for the supply of the domestic market. this last condition effectively
meant that poor countries that could not manufacture their own drugs could not
access generic versions of patented medicines. It was later amended to permit, under
strict conditions, least developed and other developing countries to import generics
made under compulsory licensing.
while measures such as compulsory licensing were included in the trIPS
agreement to preserve a balance between private proprietary interests and public
health needs, in practice their use has been tremendously contested by corporate
litigation and governmental trade sanctions. In response, developing countries
pushed for a confirmation of the legality of TRIPS flexibilities including compulsory
licensing in the 2001 Declaration on the trIPS agreement and Public Health
(wto 2001, paras. 4 and 5). Despite the declaration, countries that attempt to use
compulsory licensing remain subject to corporate litigation and unilateral trade
sanctions. For example, in 2002, the U.S. government pressured Korea to refuse
a compulsory license for Gleevec, a leukemia drug that costs around US$27 000
per annum per person. In 2006 Pfizer sued a Philippine company and government
officials in their private capacity to prevent parallel importing of a generic version
of norvasc, a hypertension drug (Sanjuan 2006). Most recently, in 2007, when
thailand issued compulsory licences on antiretroviral therapy (art), this led
abbott's laboratories to withdraw seven essential drugs from the country, and the
