I am reposting below a good article by a friend. Enjoy.
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How governments can screw up the development of new drugs
See also:
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How governments can screw up the development of new drugs
by Philip Stevens
THE PATENT-BASED system of drug development will come
under further pressure from key countries aiming to increase access to
medicines at the executive board meeting World Health Organization in March.
Critics of the system want reform, arguing it makes drugs
too expensive and fails to provide cures for those in need who may be unable to
pay, such as people in developing countries. They want to slash drug prices by
replacing intellectual property rights with government-funded prizes as the
primary innovation incentive for medicines.
Developers of new drugs would gain government cash prize
rewards for the successful development of a new medicine.
In return, companies would be forced to hand over their
intellectual property rights to the government, allowing generic manufacturers
to enter the market immediately. Competition between generic drug manufacturers
would boost access to those in need as new drugs would be sold at their
marginal cost of manufacture, so the theory goes.
Meanwhile, governments would control and plan what
disease areas are rewarded by prizes, ensuring that funding is allocated to
health priorities in a fair and transparent fashion.
“Delinking” the cost of R&D from the final price paid
for a medicine, and making governments the funders and planners of drug
development, sounds like a simple public health care solution. But so far, no
country has taken the plunge.
This is not surprising; “delinkage” is not the silver
bullet claimed by its supporters.
One charge leveled against the patent-based system is
that it creates losses for patients by inflating medicine prices well beyond
their manufacturing costs. This downplays the economic benefits of new medical
technologies from averted hospitalization and fewer sick days for workers. But
more to the point, an innovation system based on prizes could create just as
many, if not more, economic losses.
The prizes fund would have to come from taxpayers; their
burden would be at least the $141 billion spent by the private sector on
R&D each year. Income tax hikes would distort labor markets and interfere
with job creation.
Then there would be the added costs of the enormous new
bureaucracy to manage the prizes system.
In the absence of private sector investment, which
country would be willing to fill this funding gap? Here the rhetoric of many
countries, including India, at World Health Organization meetings in Geneva has
not been matched by serious action. Even modest WHO R&D delinkage
“demonstration projects” fall $73 million short of the $85 million required,
with contributions from only 10 countries.
This new world of government-funded prizes to drive
medicine innovation does not look promising.
Money apart, designing prizes that work is even more of a
problem. Government committees would struggle to determine the true economic
and social value of medicine before it is even created.
With estimates for developing a new medicine between $1.2
billion and $2.6 billion, this matters a whole lot.
For prizes lower than the true market value of the
invention, drug developers — and the venture capitalists so instrumental for
start-ups — would direct their capital away from medicine R&D towards
politically safer but less socially useful areas. New medicines would dry up.
If a government prize committee overvalues the prize, it
would trigger duplication of R&D as competitors swarm. Curious then that
proponents of these prizes argue they will end the supposedly “wasteful” and
duplicative R&D under the patent system.
Finally, there is the problem of politicization. A prize
system would hand significant new discretionary powers to government officials
as the judges of which medicines win prizes. Political factors would influence
decisions on where to allocate funding, rather than clinical need. Diseases
that could summon the most vocal lobby groups would get attention from prize
bureaucrats, while less fashionable diseases may be ignored.
Political connections and lobbying could both play a role
in securing a prize, while elected officials may attempt to influence R&D
spending by government agencies.
Patents, on the other hand, represent a far less
arbitrary form of innovation incentive. Government merely sets the framework of
patent law, under which all companies compete. And competition is the key to
innovation.
Take hepatitis C, until recently an incurable disease
afflicting around 12 million Indians. Since 2013, no fewer than 10 new
treatments have come onto the market, offering clinicians a huge range of
options. Such breadth and speed of innovation under a winner-takes-all prize
system is hard to picture.
Despite their superficial attraction, no country (other
than the technologically backward former Soviet Union) has yet replaced
intellectual property rights with prizes. The reasons are clear. Prizes risk
economic distortions, undermining incentives for innovators, and adding a new
layer of bureaucratization and politics. Be warned, therefore: delinkage and
drug development do not go hand in hand.
Philip Stevens is director of Geneva Network, a UK-based
research organization focusing on trade, innovation and health policy.
--------------See also:
IPR and Innovation 38, Recent IP development in some ASEAN countries, October 24, 2017
IPR and Innovation 39, Recent IP developments in CN, TW, KR, ID, November 05, 2017
My first article in BWorld, Oct 2007, on IPR, December 29, 2017
IPR and innovation 40, WHO health alarmism and IPR tinkering, January 16, 2018
