Violating A Patent As Moral Choice 967
kuzmich writes "The Taiwanese government has announced that it will violate patent laws to manufacture a drug that can help fight bird flu virus. In doing so, they have spelled out their reasoning very clearly: 'We have tried our best to negotiate with Roche, it means we have shown our goodwill to Roche and we appreciate their patent. But to protect our people is the utmost important thing'. Not being in Taiwan, this makes me wonder how bad the situation would have to be for some of the other governments to follow a path of violating patent and copyright laws for the benefit of the general population. Are there precedents, procedures for doing so?"
I don't blame them. (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
Potentially dumb question (Score:2, Interesting)
Patent laws essentially make private property out of ideas/designs/etc. Eminent domain is the legal right of government to take private property if the need arises. It's usually applied for things like public works (roads and the like), but I can see an equivalent application in emergency situations like a looming viral outbreak.
I would assume that legally they can do this if their laws have a provision for seizure of private property in times of emergency. Of course, IANAL, and I know exactly zilch about Taiwanese law, but it seems too obvious a legal provision not to have.
Re:A Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yikes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
At any rate, at the very least, the government can just take what it wants in the name of national security. It's what the US government did many times with new technologies that were needed for the war effort during World War II...
Brazil did it (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Government at its finest (Score:4, Interesting)
But you're confusing the Taiwanese government and the US. The above applies to the Americans- what the Taiwanese has done is perfectly understandable and akin to what people have said about AIDS drugs.
Some profit is acceptable. At what point do you tell a company to just fuck off? How much higher profit can they have before you start thinking they're asking just too much? They're already making much better margins than many other industries.
And morally/ethically: how much are you willing to give to a foreign company to potentially save your countrymen and women's lives?
Re:Not right! (Score:5, Interesting)
Talk about being nice..
Re:Not right! (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing new here.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't appear that Taiwan honors foreign patents via treaty: http://www.bpmlegal.com/pctco.html [bpmlegal.com] http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/plt/ [wipo.int] , but I may be wrong.
The US has done basically the same thing with US patents which have "national security" implications. In the US, the Constitutional authority for patents lies in Congress, so Congress is perfectly free to decide whether patent protection should/is offered for such things. I don't profess to know such specifics about Taiwan.
Who is John Galt? (Score:2, Interesting)
Two evils... What is Right? (Score:2, Interesting)
Point in fact, for any specific drug. There is generally as much marketing money spent as R&D money spent. Often times quieting the facts of studies made or of even the true effectiveness of said drugs.
As well, often times the base research for said patents comes from Tax dollars.
Now, evils aside of the "Innocent" victims.
Bird Flu and it's variants is feared to be a global killer should it ever make it into the population at large. To not allow it to be reigned in early on would be a crime committed by all and any soverign nation. How would you like to see 1/10th of the US nationality wiped out because we wouldn't allow anyone access to such drugs? (Probably an over dramatization, but historically has happened)
Also, would research really go away??? The answer is Hell No. Research will still go on, by those who care. It went on before there where Biological Patents. It would go on after too. Penecillan didn't come about because of potentially making a multi millionairre out of the CEO.
Our Patent system is currently extremely innaccurate on what its true purpose is, which is just compenstaion. There should be a feasibilty limit on what anyone can charge for a patent in relation to its true development costs and difficulty of Idea.
Re:Not right! (Score:3, Interesting)
The companies who can produce it for cheaper wins. Or they might all specialize in certain fields. The government certifies that what is produced is really what they designed in the first place. The government can pay itself back with a tax on drugs sold. It might still be efficient since nobody is duplicating research made by others that they can't see and no area is blocked by patents.
The governement research results could be made available to you if you sign a contract forcing you to share back your own research in that domain. So if other countries want to use your drugs as a basis for their own variation of the illness, you get their improvements.
Re:I don't blame them. (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope you get modded +5 insightful. I never thought of this, but it is an interesting line of reasoning. I think you are right, although I've never thought of it. And if you are right, it is scary.
To say your position another way: Curing cancer is good. However, charging money for the cure is bad. Therefore, no one can fund finding a cure. Therefore, no cure, which is bad. So our own morals have prevented us from doing good (curing cancer) by making a necessary part (funding finding a cure) bad.
The topic of Tiawan and bird-flu shows you are right. What is the way out though? Can we educate society that profit is not evil, and so allow a cure to cancer to be made a sold profitably?
This will be a thinker for me this evening (and maybe even a topic amongst my friends).
It's OK to "steal" to preserve life (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. St. Thomas Aquinas addresses this in ST II-II.66.7 [newadvent.org]. "It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need." Although this would not be a "secret" taking (it's in the headlines!), the principle still replies. IF (and I stress the "if" because I have no idea what the price tag was) Roche is truly being unreasonable in their demands, and IF (ditto) the need to act now is truly extreme, then the Taiwanese government does have the right to act in violation of the patent.
Re:Not right! (Score:5, Interesting)
An editorial in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, possibly the most authoritative source in the field, pointed out how drug companies spend far more money in marketing than they do in research. Also, drug companies often outsource the pure R&D to little-known laboratories, or buy patents from them, just to re-brand the products. I've been involved in research on levosimendan, created by Finnish Orion Corp., only to be licensed as Simdax® by Abbott Laboratories, Inc.
I figure that when push comes to shove, there's money to be made even from "open source" drugs. The so-called generic drugs, although not as profitable as your typical anti-depressant or branded statin, are a good, perfectly open source market for many companies.
Personally, I do believe in using "force" on private companies when emergencies arise. This might entail paying a forfeitary fee (kinda like compulsory licensing [wikipedia.org] in music.)
Force (of money) is what drug companies use to get (partially connivent) physicians to prescribe one expensive, proprietary drug over a generic one, even if the benefits of the former are unproven.
Force of marketing (as in "ad bombing") is what drug companies use to get unwitting patients to ask their doctors for Plavix®, even though saving one life with Plavix® may cost millions of dollars which could be spent elsewhere more usefully. That is, especially in countries where resources are limited and the health care system is public, that money could save more lives if used for screening programs and promotion of healthy lifestyle, for example.
Sheer force of money is also what gets people to buy Aleve (naproxene sodium) over, well... Naproxen sodium in its cheaper, unbranded, but otherwise perfectly equivalent form!
So be it: fsck them for Greater Good. Granted, a better definition for "Greater Good" would be useful.
Re:Not right! (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe that Taiwan is doing the right thing, since the manufacturer of the bird flu drugs did not want to sell them the drugs for a price they were able/willing to pay.
I believe the rules for negotiating price are a bit different when one of the parties can write the law
USA did this once. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I don't blame them. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I am not proposing that we pay the estate of Sir Isaac Newton royalties every time we use newtonian mechanics - but it is equally absurd to pay royalties to any other scientist, given the collaborative and accumulative nature of science. This is an auxillary point, and to cover it in detail we'd have to go into the many ways in which a typical pharmaceutical patent is very different from, for example, patents on components in consumer electronics (which are, I would argue, deserving of patent protection.)
You say the burden of proof is on me and then you dismiss the three peer reviewed journal articles I provided because you don't like the journals they are published in? I have provided proof - the burden is now on you to debunk it, and if you're only argument is that you don't know anything about economics: that doesn't debunk squat. If you really want copies, Dean Baker can be contacted at his email address, baker at cepr dot net. I'm sure he'll send them to you, and probably fairly promptly.
Did you even read the piece that you do have access to? It has the most salient point.
Cost to public, drug patents, per year - approx $150 mil
R&D expenditures of pharmaceutical industry, per year - approx $41 mil
The methodology here is pretty transparent.
As for blood pressure, yes, it was elucidated in public universities. You can easily get a list of thousands of references from medline - tell you what, if you actually care, tell me which journals you have access to (and regard as acceptable) and I can find the relevant publications for you.
The question *you* didn't answer is - do you know anything about chemistry or biology?
There's no point in my arguing specifics (e.g. how much of a role did public sector neuroscience research play in the successful development of neurotonin) if you don't know anything about the topic, is there? An argument from authority is hardly satisfying, especially if you don't have access to any journals.
Re:I don't blame them. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I don't blame them. (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who does this for a living -- what you're saying is absolutely, positively, utterly wrong. You do not have the slightest fucking clue what you are talking about.
But don't take my word for it. Go to the job postings on any pharma company's web site and take a look at what jobs they're filling. Go to PubMed and read their papers.
Re:Not right! (Score:2, Interesting)
Bribes are rarely paid either to or by governments, but pass between corrupt individuals and corporations. It takes more than the will of the government to prevent corruption (I'm sure the US is opposed to corruption, but in the past US corporations have made and received bribes; and at least equally so in Britain) and preventing corruption doesn't magically make the money involved available for the public good, although it may (e.g.) reduce defence spending in the medium term by permitting a (more) free and efficient market to develop.
John.
Re:Not right! (Score:4, Interesting)
Tell that to all the people forced out of homes or businesses for amounts of money that are far below what their property is assesed at when they refuse to sell for the government's ridiculously low offers. They just say "well, tough luck, we're taking it anyway and that's all you're getting, assessments be damned".
Fallacies (Score:3, Interesting)
Private R&D spending on pharmaceuticals exceeds public R&D spending. This is actually true for R&D in general ($132 billion federal vs. $190 billion industry), and it's true for pharmaceuticals ($30 billion federal vs. $49 billion industry). For the first 3 figures, see here:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/rd06main.htm [aaas.org] [chapters 2 & 4]
For the last figure, see here:
http://www.phrma.org/publications/publications//2
The last is an industry organization, but r&d spending is part of companies' public SEC filings and the figures are in line with the aggregate numbers.
It's a fallacy that public and private pharmaceutical r&d are substitutes. Public r&d tends to focus on basic science while private r&d focuses on specific drug development and testing. Here it is from the horse's mouth:
http://ott.od.nih.gov/Reports/211856ottrept.pdf [nih.gov]
The public sector would be just as good at developing drugs as it would be at making cars and televisions (see Union, Soviet).
"these additional resources are a *fraction* of the total increase in drug prices that result from the patents they are awarded"
If patents over-compensate drug companies, then we'd see a lot more entry into the (apparently very lucrative) drug business by new firms until these extra-ordinary returns are competed away. Even with patent protection, lucrative business models attract entry by competitors until excess profits are competed away.
What makes you think R&D Costs Alot? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's be realistic (Score:2, Interesting)
This is not an abstract statistic. Real people, your friends and family included, will get the virus, have fever, cough blood and die within a few days... simple as that. I've heard that 98 of 100 will survive the bird flu pandemic... seemingly not bad, but do you realize what that means? Think of a hundred people you know about (I'm sure you can) now think of the bird flu randomly killing any two of those people... are you ok with that? This is the future we are going to be dealing with all too soon.
This is why any discussion as to what incentive there is for drug companies to develop vaccination to the bird flu seems so ridiculous to me. First off, bird flu (when it happens) will only last for one season... no matter how you slice it, there could never be any real market (as there is with AIDS) to continuously fend off bird flu long-term... it is an immediate, one-time emergency. Second, with the first point in mind, there doesn't always have to be a financial benefit to making a life-saving vaccine. There are plenty of ways of making money on other drugs that do provide continuous streams of revenue (like heartburn pills, anti-depressants... almost anything, really). Here's an idea for the drug companies: relinquish your patent, work with the government willingly to save lives from this global pandemic. Let taxes offset the cost of production and offset the rest of the production by jacking up the prices on your other, non-critical drugs. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I'd gladly welcome a kick in my taxes and pay an extra $10 per box of Prilosec (or whatnot) to know that my loved ones and I will be safe from this coming pandemic.
Food for thought: The children and the old people will be the safest from the bird flu because of their weaker immune systems. It will be people in the prime of their lives who will die the most quickly and violently because the bird flu attacks the lungs and a healthy immune system, in trying to kill the bird flu, will also attack your lungs! This is a gruesome prospect, the likes of which the most of us have (hopefully) never before had to deal with.
I sincerely believe that we as a people can prepare for and prevent this, but first we have to make the decision to do so.
Good, Bad, I'm the guy with the dope (Score:2, Interesting)
Health care and medicinal research should either be government-communized so everyone can have access to proper treatment and medicine, or shot to hell so as to skim off the weak and purify the breed through natural selection.
Now I still hate humans and wish most of them would die a horrible death for my primal amusement, but I think I'd rather see fully subsidized health care for all, and toss these glorified drug dealers back into the ranks of the working poor.
The less rich people there are, the less poor people there are. Now I'm not saying to swing into full-on communism, but maybe as a modern society we could find an efficient mix of various ideologies in order to benefit humankind as a whole. Capitalism at the expense of lives only breeds more hatred.
Re:Not right! (Score:3, Interesting)
money not the problem. supply doesn't make demand (Score:3, Interesting)
Taiwan does have the money, but the BBC article failed to point out that Roche has been insufficient in supplying Tamiflu to meet worldwide demand. Taiwanese government plans to address the supply issue by manufacturing the drug in solutions. This has at least two benefits:
Beyond meeting the supply, Taiwanese government does plan to compensate Roche for what Tamiflu is worth. As I understand it, a negotiation is still going on, but it is true that Taiwanese government has went ahead to produce the drug. BBC does not make it clear either.
Re:Fallacies (Score:4, Interesting)
When I said "public" I meant to include non-profits as well as "private" universities; non-indutry would be a better term - in my lab this equals about 20% of federal funding, which is probably about typical, although in cancer research is it much, much higher.
I would say that you should also include a variety of tax-breaks - often at the State level - which are given in some way theoretically conditioned on R&D, as non-industry funding. State governments, or funds that pass through state agencies in one way or another (from tuition, etc.) also pay, indirectly, a varying but sometimes significant portion of the cost for research at some state universities, the accounting is not transparent so this is much more difficult to tally. So the State share is non-zero, but hard to say how big it really is.
Industry also spends a significant amount on R&D actually located in Universities, but I'm pretty sure they include that in their filing. My lab gets hardly any industry money but my Dad gets a fair amount.
On the other hand, Columbia (my institution) in particular makes a fair amount of money from patent income, and it would be highly disingenuous of me to include that in the "non-industry" R&D total, given what I am proposing.
Finally, the federal number has not grown as much as I would have expected, I haven't actually seen these numbers for a few years, I'm pretty sure that the Federal pharma R&D was bigger when last I looked.
Anyway, thank you for the correction, but you can change "most" to "comparable amounts" in my original post it doesn't really change anything.
Your prediction is simply not holding up to recent history - my evidence here in anecdotal, but when a scientist develops a new drug, they start up a little company - so that they can sell the patent to Pfizer. For them to actually make the drug themselves depends on assumptions regarding low cost of entry which simply do not hold in this case. The result of this is that we have a sustained oligopoly which will not fix itself through competition, and is in fact becoming more entrenched.
Re:Two Problems (Score:3, Interesting)
The same goes for research. For instance, did you know several pharma companies barred researchers from developing any kind of AIDS vaccine for the past 20 year? If such a vaccine existed, it'd have to be mass produced as a generic in the face of the epidemic, which is now killing millions in under-developed (read poor) countries. Instructions were given to only develop treatments as long and expensive as possible to maximize profit.
My ex-wife works for one of Roche's competitors and she told me of several efficient drugs being shelved because the marketing dept decided the profit forecast was too slim. Thousands of people (obviously not enough) with multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease or AIDS are being left aside dying and/or suffering on the altar of profit and (I guess mostly) shareholders' dividends.
Pharma companies are truly evil, probably a lot more than all other industries put together. The welfare of human beings definitely isn't one of their objectives and hasn't been for quite some time now. Remember they have no interest whastoever to see us fit and healthy!
Cheers,
But what about the biotech inventors? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is particularly unfortunate is that many drugs (including tamiflu and the superior inhaled drug relenza) were invented by relatively small biotechs. (OK, Gilead isn't small any more, but Biota is *tiny*). Small biotechs are absolutely reliant on the fees and royalties they generate through licensing their inventions to Big Pharma, who have the money to get them through the FDA approval process and marketed.
Break a patent for Roche or GSK, they'll be annoyed but hardly notice the change in cash-flow. The biotech, however, will lose its sole cash-flow life-line. Biota are collaborating with Japanese pharma Sankyo to produce a second-generation antiviral for influenza that looks like being needed once-weekly for both prophylaxis and treatment. Be a real pity to destroy promising biotech-level research like that by cutting profits at the Big Pharma end of town.
Disclaimer: Yes I work for a biotech - own shares in them too.
breaking the tamiflu patent (Score:2, Interesting)
No Sympathy for the drug companies. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not right! (Score:4, Interesting)
Because, to quote Dow (buyers of Union Carbide and inheritors of the Bhopal Disaster legacy)
And I doubt their shareholders will support you (nor will the US govt) since one of the answers to this Dow statement (by a Dow shareholder) was
Remember that we're talking about tens of thousands of deaths, still ongoing...
Fortune Magazine Commentary (Score:2, Interesting)
The gist of it is, if you dump Tamiflu into the environment to save a bunch of chickens, which is what the Asian governments are discussing [not, as you might think, to save a few sidereal infected humans] you're going to destroy Tamiflu's effectiveness. To put this in perfect perspective for you, if THEY push Tamiflu into the environment when the virus hasn't even crossed over to a human pandemic state, the virus will adapt, and by the time it's crossed over and YOU are SICK AND DYING, Tamiflu will have zero affect on the virus, and YOU will have no defense, making your chance of death about 25% based on historical projections. So Monday, when you get to work, look around, and imagine 1/4 of those people not there because some fucking QUACK in ASIA had to save some DUCKS.
Some cultural suffering v. My survival = ROAST DUCK Here's more background material [foreignaffairs.org] from Foreign Affairs, written by some smart people that may shed additional light on the subject.
Re:Not right! (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course it kills itself off, eventually. In 1918, the Spanish Flu (a variant of bird flu) took with it about 50 million people. It killed more people than World War I. A repeat of that incident is what everyone is so scared about.
That said, it is impossible to say how lethal this variant is, since of course only the people who got seriously ill went to hospitals. For all we know, there could be a million people who never got anything worse than a runny nose.
In this you hit the bullseye. Always wash your hands when you come inside. Always wash your hands before eating. That won't guarantee that you won't get the flu, but at least it lessens the chances.