Today,
world-wide health care is a multi-billion dollar industry. According
to experts, the large pharmaceutical companies now control much of
the health care in many countries. They also set the standards for
the practice of medicine in all developing countries. For example,
doctors are no longer free to choose the most reliable and safe form
of a therapy. Instead, drug companies financially control medical
doctors through sponsorships. To learn more about the pharmaceutical
business I spoke to Tahir Amin, the co-founder of I-MAK (Initiative
for Medicines, Access, & Knowledge). I-Mak is a US – based non
profit organization working world wide. With a team of lawyers and
scientists, I-MAK wants to increase access to affordable medicines by
making sure the patent system works. I-Mak believes that the patent
system was designed to balance innovation in medicines and the
disseminiation of new treatmets to society. It also believes that the
current patent system disproportionately represents and enforces
private interests over the public good. Patients' needs must come
first.
Tahir Amin
Why
the high prices?
Tahir
Amin explained how the pharmaceutical companies justify very high
prices on medicine by claiming they need money to cover high Research
& Development costs. They also claim to be very innovative and
that profits allow research to move forward. Obviously they use some
of their profits on research. But the problem is that all the
pharmaceutical companies have yet to release the exact numbers. Only
a few elites know how much profit actually goes to finance
innovation. It is common knowledge that big pharma's profits are
enormously high. They continuously get very high profits as measured
on the Fortune 500 list in the U.S.
(Please see the full list from
2011 here: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/full_list/)
Solutions
In
2009 Doctors Without Borders launched a campaign to pressure
pharmaceutical companies to share their patent rights of certain
antiretroviral HIV/AIDS drugs. If they did, they believed the impact
for those who lives with HIV/AIDS would be huge. Such action would
make the cure more readily available and affordable. The companies
would continue to make profits on their patents; the royalties would
be paid by the companies that use their patents. For the listed
pharmaceutical companies, this was a unique opportunity to show that
they have a humanitarian side, and that they are seriously committed
to treating and preventing HIV/AIDS. Tahir Amin explained that the
idea was great but that there was a few problems. Not all
pharmaceutical companies liked the idea. Johnson & Johnson which
holds patent on three key new HIV drugs refused to license these
patents to the Patent Pool. Some people living with HIV believed that
this idea would give too much power to the companies and accused the
companies that actually agreed to the idea to only do so that they
would receive very positive press coverage. As it all turned out the
patent laws prevented such action. Now Tahir Amin and I-MAK are
trying to get change by working towards a more transparent system,
where patents don't function as a hindrance for people to afford
their medications. What they mostly do is to deliver technical advise
on patents and access to medicines. I-MAK also creates an evidence –
based approach to improve policy reform and prepares license
agreements that ensure new therapies are disseminated to patients.
I-MAK provides global patent information on medicines and reviews
drug patents to strengthen patent eximination. Last, but not least,
they intervene selectively on poor quality patents if the drug is
priced too high for patients. I-MAK works with governments,
scientists, procurers, suppliers, health organizations and NGO's.
Now
we can see a distinct pattern. People living with HIV are dealing
with a chronic disease that requires them to take medicines for the
rest of your lives. For many HIV positive people this is an economic
struggle. Medications are very expensive. Access to medicine varies
from country to country. If a patient lives in the US, patients have
to cover their medical costs by themselves (even with health
insurance a patient can easily end up with a bill around $ 1000 per
month). Also,
poverty and new HIV infections are closely linked. Heterosexuals who
live below the poverty line in the US are five times more likely to
get infected with HIV compared to the rest of the nation's
heterosexual population. The profit based health care system makes
this happen. Pharmaceutical companies live and thrive largely on ill
people. Many ask why such corporations would be interested in curing
a disease when they earn so much from selling the drugs to HIV AIDS
patients? If this is not true, why are they refusing to tell the
public where all the profits go?
Sanna Klemetti
s.klemetti@globalaging.org
