 | http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/opinion/18tues2.html
NY Times
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
EDITORIAL
India's Choice
For an AIDS patient in a poor country lucky enough to get
antiretroviral treatment, chances are that the pills that stave off
death come from India. Generic knockoffs of AIDS drugs made by Indian
manufacturers - now treating patients in 200 countries - have brought
the price of antiretroviral therapy down to $140 a year from $12,000.
That luck may soon run out. India has become the world's supplier of
cheap AIDS drugs because it has the necessary raw materials and a
thriving and sophisticated copycat drug industry made possible by laws
that grant patents to the process of making medicines, rather than to
the drugs themselves. But when India signed the World Trade
Organization's agreement on intellectual property in 1994, it was
required to institute patents on products by Jan. 1, 2005. These rules
have little to do with free trade and more to do with the lobbying
power of the American and European pharmaceutical industries.
India's government has issued rules that will effectively end the
copycat industry for newer drugs. For the world's poor, this will be a
double hit - cutting off the supply of affordable medicines and
removing the generic competition that drives down the cost of
brand-name drugs.
But there is still a chance to fix the flaws in these rules, because
they are contained in a decree that must be approved by Parliament.
Heavily influenced by multinational and Indian drug makers eager to
sell patented medicines to India's huge middle class, the decree is so
tilted toward the pharmaceutical industry that it does not even take
advantage of rights countries enjoy under the W.T.O. to protect public
health.
In November 2001, members of the World Trade Organization agreed that
countries can issue compulsory licenses to permit generic production of
patented drugs without the patent holder's agreement in order to
protect public health, at home or abroad. But under the Indian decree,
getting a compulsory license would be slow and difficult; each
application would face a fight from multinational drug firms and the
governments that do their bidding. India should adopt laws that
expedite compulsory licenses, including allowing challenges to proceed
after production begins instead of holding it up. In addition, India
must close an important loophole affecting the sick overseas: under the
current rules, Malawi, for example, could not import from India an
inexpensive version of a medicine that is not under patent in Malawi.
This needs to be changed.
Industry lobbyists managed to insert two noxious provisions in the
decree that go well beyond the W.T.O. rules. The decree would limit
efforts to challenge patents before they take effect. Also, it is
uncomfortably vague about whether companies could engage in
"evergreening" - extending their patents by switching from a capsule to
tablet, for example, or finding a new use for the product. This
practice, a problem in America and elsewhere, extends monopolies and
discourages innovation.
While some drugs - those that existed before 1995 - will always be off
patent in India, some widely used drugs are at risk. So are new
generations of much more expensive AIDS drugs that will soon be needed
worldwide as resistance builds to current medicines. If the decree is
not changed before Parliament approves it, it will be very difficult
for India to supply them. India's parliamentarians must keep in mind
that this arcane dispute is actually a crucial battleground for the
health of hundreds of millions of people in India and worldwide.
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