Global Access To University-Derived Medicines 154
Nicholas Stine writes, "Universities should make their patented biomedical innovations accessible to those in poor countries, according to a consensus statement signed by dozens of international global health leaders. Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, a student group active at over 30 universities in North America, drafted the Philadelphia Consensus Statement urging universities to adopt licensing policies that would facilitate access to all university-derived medicines in developing countries. Notable signatories include 28 non-governmental organizations, four Nobel laureates, Justice Edwin Cameron of the South African Supreme Court of Appeal, Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health."
This is a horrible idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Consensus statement suggests that Universities should be "engaging with nontraditional partners, such as public-private partnerships or developing country institutions, creating new opportunities for drug development, and carving out neglected disease research exemptions in any university patents or licenses". So in other words, instead of selling their patents and discoveries to drug companies, they should be giving it away? What incentive would one of these "nontraditional partners" have to sell a $50 drug for $.05 when they could sell it on the black market for $5.00?
Drugs will not solve the long term problems in developing countries, they'll just make them worse. Many of these countries do not have the natural resources to handle their populations. This lack of resources leads to many of the diseases that our drugs are supposed to fix (plus many other problems, such as the constant wars and corruption present in Africa). Sending them cheap drugs puts more strain on existing resources, since more people are able to survive in an area that can't support them. We need to attack the root cause of their problems: corruption, overpopulation, lack of education (particularly sex education), and sanitation. Once these are solved/improved, the need for access to new miracle drugs is greatly reduced.
In short, the consortium is barking up the wrong tree. They should be trying to pursuade drug manufacturers to ship more reduced/free products to these third world countries. That would provide the benefits they are looking for, while not reducing the drug's value and risking future research investments. I'm not saying this is a great idea either, but it doesn't nearly the same negative impact as giving away the patent or production methods.
And in other news... (Score:2, Insightful)
Fat Chance (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And in other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Followed by everyone being wiped out by the flu, but at least they had 5 choices of drugs for making their dick hard until the very end.
unfair (Score:3, Insightful)
This reminds me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, hey, if we can, then it's immoral not to.
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, now that you might be back to reality- if you're a university professor, your main motivation is not money. If it was, you would be in industry. Or more likely, gotten a law degree instead of a degree in medicine or microbiology. The people working these jobs aren't going to quit because they're suddenly not making a fortune. Hell, they weren't making a fortune anyway- the university was.
The fact is that some things are more important than money (actually, I can't think of anything less important than money, but thats for another time). There are people dieing that don't need to, because they can't afford drugs which already exist. Not because its expensive/difficult to make the drug, but because patents prevent alternative manufacturers from doing so. This is not acceptable.
Furthermore, this is university research. Over 95% of it is paid for with public money- money given to them by government grants. If the public is already paying for it, the public should have full benefits of the discovery. There is no excuse for taking my tax dollars for research, and then forcing me to pay Pheizer or Merks for the results of that research. All research at public universities or using government money should be public domain.
I guess the poor "deserve" everything now (Score:4, Insightful)
Better Ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny how you pronounced that as "all that essential science should stay in monopoly hands, away from the public good".
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:2, Insightful)
Exclaiming that all the patents should be free is a non-solution. It'll just make more problems. Get onto the drugs companies and get them to perhaps scale their pricing structure to allow poorer nations to get drugs.
Unfortunatly Universities are businesses, quit trying to treat them like charities.
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, there is already quite a bit of public money invested in biomedical research. The NIH budget is about 28 billion dollars [nih.gov] (one of the major reasons why the U.S. is a world research leader, by the way).
Currently, universities are encouraged to patent innovations created with federal funding and make money off those patents, thanks to the Bayh-Dole Act [economist.com]. This statement calls on universities to open up their patents when doing so could help the developing world. It does not appear to call for any changes in how public money is spent -- only in what is done with the products of that public investment.
As A Taxpayer... (Score:2, Insightful)
I do know that profits on patents held by universities alows them to retain the best talent, and therefore continue innovative and ground-breaking work. Everyone benefits, believe it or not.
I am all for the common good, but not when 'student groups' decide that socialism is good for me and mine ! And I am sure that once thier folks or the taxpayers quit paying thier tuition, they will feel the same way. Remember the saying 'A liberal is a Conservative who has yet to be mugged'...
This is a horrible idea!-Brown Percentages. (Score:1, Insightful)
Proof? Or is this another example of neither region numbers? And even if the research was paid for by public funds, the raw research will do no good without the practical work that private industry does to make certain the end result is safe and usable.
Why shouldn't we get paid for our work? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't understand is why it's okay for people to go into just about every other career for the money, but if someone in science decides to make a buck they're evil. I made ~16k per year while a graduate student. My friends who went into business made ~60k out of college. Five years later I made ~40k as a post-doc (on the high-end of the salary scale). My friends were up to 100k. As an Assistant Professor I make ~70k (on the high end). All of my friends from college make over 100k, and most make over 150k. My work isn't easier either. I put in a minimum of 60 hours per week, and when writing grants I often put in 80+ hours. My friends who are making over 100k per year - a 'tough week' is one where they work over 50 hours. If a scientist put in the blood, sweat, and tears to produce a patent that actually produces money (most don't), then all the more power to them. And people wonder why the younger (American) generation aren't interested in a career in science.
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why shouldn't we get paid for our work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Last time I looked (like on my monthly statement), a post-doc is a salaried position, and pretty well paid too.
In Sweden, doctoral students are paid a real salary, since, after all, they are doing research and teaching. The salary isn't all that high - they're doing it under close supervision after all - but certainly livable.
For all the kvetching, a researcher in the sciences is not poor. Please take a comparison to most normal jobs. And if you want to make lots of money instead, why not just go into industry then?
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:2, Insightful)
For crying out loud, no one's robbing anyone. It's not like third world countries are a massive component of profits. Even if we tax to pay for this, i.e. tax to directly incentivise medical research, this is scarcely going to cut into your hamburger budgets.
Nobody chooses where they are born. Screw whether poor people 'deserve it', and start asking yourself what is the human thing to do.
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Parent said "Asking Universities to provide access to their discoveries would reduce the value of their discoveries on the open market..." and then: "They should be trying to pursuade drug manufacturers to ship more reduced/free products to these third world countries."
Private industry is heavily dependent on licensing publicly funded discoveries from universities (search on the phrase "technology transfer" at any research-oriented university to see examples). Universities could include in those licenses the stipulation that drugs created from the patents be made available for free or low cost to developing countries. A carefully crafted stipulation in a licensing agreement would be unlikely to drastically reduce the market value of a discovery, since the drug companies would not have been making much money in those countries anyway.
Sure, drug companies could voluntarily do that on their own, but a for-profit company is unlikely to voluntarily do anything that could imaginably restrict their profits, even if only by a small amount. Because of their nonprofit status and public service mission, universities are more likely to get the ball rolling.
Leech! (Score:3, Insightful)
I REALLY resent all of the University profs who get their money from Government grants, patent something, make a ton of money, and NONE of it goes back to the Taxpayer. You're basically getting fat off of the backs of the average citizen.
It used to be that Profs did research for the enjoyment of it, and they shared their research far more willingly. That's all changed since Academia bribed Congress into one of the biggest giveaways in the history of America. And quite frankly, innovation has taken a serious nose dive.
This is just Academic welfare.
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that putting a clause as you suggest in the licensing agreement probably wouldn't lower the value of the agreement to a pharma company. However, I disagree that companies won't do ANYTHING voluntarily that would restrict their profits. Most major pharma outfits sell products in the 3rd world for little to no profit - and often at a loss. In part this is to avoid the creation of a 3rd-world black market that could trickle back into the 1st world. Also, in part this helps big pharma outfits to recruit top researchers who care about such things.
Re:Supply and Demand at work (Score:3, Insightful)
What used to be:
People got a PhD or MD and went on to do research. People used to get tenure either when they were hired or shortly thereafter.
Abundant funding and early starting times made it possible for people to enjoy doing science in their most productive years.
What is there now:
5-10 year postdocs when you get paid next to nothing (yeah, a bit above grad student but nowhere near enough to buy a house), then 5-6 years of tenure-track when you cannot make a misstep or else you are out. Assistant professors cannot do high risk research because it's now a publish or perish world quite literally. Once you get tenure, those that become big shots do have spare funds to do interesting research but get little time to do it themselves (the fun part). They end up managing huge numbers of people and become managers. Everyone else struggles for money, most often so much they have no time to spend in the lab anyway.
So current generation of scientists is increasingly bitter and feels like the system is using them without letting us do what we signed up for: explore. People do feel that using the system to their own benefit is only fair. Some feel that current system has got so bad that they have no obligation to it whatsoever, hence deterioration of research ethics (the end of the world scenario if you ask me but I see where it comes from).
Current system underpays scientists greatly, either in terms of direct compensation or by underfunding our research efforts turning us into grant writing machines rather than scientists. In your terms, we have few financial perks, but the nonfinancial have also largely disappeared. In short, don't be surprised that people are less and less willing "to put up with reduced economics".
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, most universities reinvest a large portion of their licensing money into research anyway, so the cycle is largely self-feeding already.
Re:Why shouldn't we get paid for our work? (Score:4, Insightful)
We paid you, we supported your research, we should own the result. If you want to own the result, then feel free to go start up your own lab and look for the venture capital to fund your research just like every other person who wants to strike out into business for themselves. You knew when you entered academia that it was a cushy job with a nice pension (wouldn't want to forget that since they're virtually non-existent in the private sector). You're getting a better deal than virtually every private sector peon gets, so quit your whining.
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
as someone just said; 4 different ways to make your penis stiff.
The placebos in the Cold Symptom isle at the drug store are part of a multi-billion dollar market. Couple this with the rise in spending on advertising and lobbying -- and we have a drug industry that already knows where profits lie.
There is already technology, to reduce the length of time to create an immunization from the 12 to 15 months that the "injected egg" technique uses, to something like 3 months (I believe I read that on slashdot). Why isn't it being used? Because drug companies already sell immunizations as fast as they can -- even though they are usually so out of date a new flu variant has spawned. They wait for another manufacturer to make it cheaper or the government to subsidize.
While I'm on my rant... I remember watching UCTV about stem cell research. While the hype and fictions were being dispelled (no magic bullet), an interesting graph about Cancer outcomes was put forth. Over the past 50 years, the survival's of Cancer patients has gone up 1% (down from 2% around the 1980's). I suspect new cancers are coming forward due to some environmental conditions
While there are some wonderful medical advances, I think that the machine is broken. Government money should only be subsidizing CURES, not treatments -- because there is no incentive for cures to Business. Not that I suspect a conspiracy, just that money goes to research based on market profitability. If the government ends up subsidizing that sort of research, it's only adding to profits on a balance sheet -- not promoting the public good.
Take a good look at stem cell research for example. The research is still going on... just not publicly. I suspect, that Bush and the paid lobbyists, could care less about moral issues -- they may just not want public funded research that would allow many discoveries to be in the public domain. Stop funding stem-cell research, and it becomes a profitable patent. The Health Industry must want to preserve all the easy to get patents for themselves.
I think we need to look again at what works and what doesn't. The concept of the free market achieving great things, without a strong vision in government forcing it too seems to be a wash.
Re:This is a horrible idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
The same that they have now - none. Drugs and medical devices are largely developed on government money, because there's no reason to spend your own money when the governments are willing to pay (both through grants, and through the welfare state).
But hey, of course this company is entitled to kill millions in third world countries in order to maximise their return on your investment. Hence the patent-monopoly market.
This will never happen, because the third world country would just ship them back again, undercutting the manufacturer's prices in richer countries. So long as these people have an unrestrained monopoly, the status quo will not change.