Nobel Laureate Attacks Medical Intellectual Property

An anonymous reader writes "Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who was fired by the World Bank blasted drug patents in an editorial in the British Medical Journal titled 'Scrooge and intellectual property rights.' 'Knowledge is like a candle, when one candle lights another it does not diminish its light.' In medicine, patents cost lives. The US patent for turmeric didn't stimulate research, and restricted access by the Indian poor who actually discovered it hundreds of years ago. 'These rights were intended to reduce access to generic medicines and they succeeded.' Billions of people, who live on $2-3 a day, could no longer afford the drugs they needed. Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research. A few scientists beat the human genome project and patented breast cancer genes; so now the cost of testing women for breast cancer is 'enormous.'"

Re:Patented Breast Cancer Genes?

[mattjb0010]

How can you patent something that is a 'naturally' (using that term loosely) occurring genetic abnormality?

click [ornl.gov]

The more things change ...

[Trailwalker]

Things haven't changed all that much since the days of theChamberlen [wikipedia.org] family.

Re:Patented Breast Cancer Genes?

[cnettel]

It's the detection methods and the connection to breast cancer, not the nucleotide sequence itself, that's covered by the patent. Compare this with the original discovery of blood groups for transfusions, that was patentable as well. Coming up with good protocols for inducing the proper antibodies in animals (one way to do it), for example.

In this case, the specific sequences connected to the disease was not common knowledge beforehand. In addition, you have to come up with relevant primers to amplify the relevant sequence in a specific, yet reproducible, manner to aid detection. I don't think anyone has really tried to challenge the exact scope of the patent, as it might be possible to circumvent it by changing the method or even trying to purify and detect the protein product instead. (However, that would NOT be a trivial thing to do, much harder than the current genetic test.)

An alternative

[tgibbs]

Complaints about the patent system in drug development typically founder on one sticking point. Without patents, who is going to come up with the immense sums required to bring a drug from investigational status to clinical reality? One alternative, of course, is a national drug discovery enterprise, funded by tax money. The problem with that, however, is that the funds required are immense, and the risks are high. Who is going to take the blame if the product of a billion-dollar drug discovery effort fails in Phase III trials, something that happens rather frequently to pharmaceutical companies? Not to mention the risks that such an effort would turn into another pork boondoggle, with money being expended in response to political rather than medical needs.

Stiglitz's proposal offers an intriguing compromise--a system of federally funded prizes for private development of "open source" pharmaceuticals. Moreover, it could potentially coexist with the current patent system, perhaps initially focusing on areas that are underserved by the pharmaceutical industry, such as development of new antibiotics. Of course, the prizes would have to be very large to attract private development, given that the open source requirement would greatly limit the profit potential of the drugs discovered. However, the prizes could reasonably be staged--so much for successfully passing Phase I, so much for successfully passing Phase II, etc. etc.

Re:Medical Industry

[techno-vampire]

2. Stop developing drugs for stupid shit. Yes, lots of people have Type2 diabetes. We already have a cure for that; a treadmill. Stop wasting money to develop a drug *just* to make money off a stupid disease.

Oh, how I wish I could get rid of my Type II diabetes just by getting more exercise. I love to walk and often walk several miles a day, but I still have to take my pill morning and night. Part of Type II diabetes is resistance to insulin, so that even if you have what would normally be enough, you still have blood sugar trouble. I hope that someday, preferably soon, you can learn from personal experience that a treadmill isn't a cure for diabetes.

Re:eminent domain

[sam_handelman]

The parent is thinking along the correct lines but is missing something very fundamental. "Intellectual property" IS NOT PROPERTY. The fourth amendment does not apply! Since a patent is merely a privelege granted by the government, the government can simply give a more restricted privelege.

  That said, there's no need to take away their patents, by eminent domain or otherwise - you can force Compulsory Licensing [wikipedia.org] on them. There's ample precedent for this. The present system of compulsory licensing is simply inadequate to bring, for example, AIDS cocktails into the affordable range for poor Africans, so it needs to be strengthened.

  Obviously, strengthening compulsory licensing of patents would cut into the profits of the pharmaceutical companies (duh), so they're going to fight it tooth and nail; but it's the simplest most conservative solution to the underlying problem.

  I, myself, think that a better solution would be to stop offering patents on drugs at all (as it is basically an immoral practice, as TFA points out) and to provide, not "prizes", but "grants" that move beyond basic biology research (presently funded by grants) and into drug discovery. Elementary math indicates that the cost savings would be huge.

  The government bureaucracy might grow somewhat, although doing a good job of awarding patents (which they don't do) probably wouldn't be that much less bureaucracy than doing a good job of administering drug discovery grants - but the equally distasteful private bureaucracies that currently parasitize themselves off of government graft would atrophy - which any real libertarian (as opposed to someone who claims a libertarian ideology in order to justify their slavish support for the uber-rich) would have to support.

Re:Patented Breast Cancer Genes?

[troll -1]

Maybe because Article I, section 8 of the Constitution allows Congress to grant exclusive rights to authors and inventors for their respective "writings and discoveries".

Re:Yeah, but...

[textstring]

Now I know all that text is daunting but if you'd have read towards the end of the article he actually offers an alternative/supplemental way of rewarding innovation - prize funds. Whether these would attract the huge pharmaceutical firms is unknown. However, I imagine they would attract smaller independent research groups in the way the Xprize (and others) have done. If there are $200,000 prizes for getting linux to work on an xbox, i t seems only reasonable that there should be huge cash prizes for developing treatments/cures/alternative drug therapies, and certainly these things would improve the quality of life for far more people than some nerds in their mothers basements (no offense, I'm of the garage variety).

Jefferson

[Paradise Pete]

'Knowledge is like a candle, when one candle lights another it does not diminish its light.'

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." - Thomas Jefferson

Re:can this be true?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turmeric is a tropical herb grown in East India, and the powdered product made from the rhizomes of its flowers has several popular uses worldwide. Turmeric powder, which has a distinctive deep yellow color and bitter taste, is used as a dye, a cooking ingredient, and a litmus in a chemical test, and has medicinal uses as well. In the mid-1990s, this product became the subject of a patent dispute with important ramifications for international trade law. A U.S. patent on turmeric was awareded to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1995, specifically for the "use of turmeric in wound healing." This patent also granted them the exclusive right to sell and distribute turmeric.[1] Two years later, a complaint was filed by India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, which challenged the novelty of the University's "discovery," and the U.S. patent office investigated the validity of this patent. In India, where turmeric has been used medicinally for thousands of years, concerns grew about the economically and socially damaging impact of this legal "biopiracy." In 1997, the patent was revoked. But for two years the patent on turmeric had stood, although the process was non-novel and had in fact been traditionally practiced in India for thousands of years, as was eventually proven by ancient Sanskrit writings that documented turmeric's extensive and varied use throughout India's history. Many developing countries are concerned that the globalization of intellectual property rights under the WTO's TRIPs agreement, and the negative consequences it has for traditional indigenous knowledge and biodiversity.

No Nobel prize for Joseph Stiglitz

[elander]

There is'nt, never has been, and never will be a Nobel prize in economics.

The award he was presented with was "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It was established in 1968, and not intended to celebrate the memory of Alfred Nobel as the name suggests, but the three hundredth birhtday of the Swedish central bank.

Alfred Nobel only mentions prizes in five categories in his last will and testament: "Literature", "Physiologi or Medicin", "Physics", "Chemistry" and "Champions of peace", and these real Nobel prizes have been awarded since 1901.

An excerpt from the testament [nobelprize.org]

Re:Easy there with the terms like "murder"

[b.burl]

I think you missed the intent of the question. He/she knows its not legally defined as murder, the author wants to know why it is not. What is the moral and ethical culpability of a person who has the means to save someone's life without risking their own or endangering others?

If a person walks by a kiddie pool and sees a newborn in the process of drowning and chooses not to do anything, is that person not morally responsible for the death of that person? And if so, why don't we classify it as murder? Basic legal maxims include the belief that a person is responsible for the consequences of his actions if he is aware of what the outcome of his actions is highly likely to be and chooses to proceed with those actions. So why not include the idea of a person being culpable for the highly predictable consequences of his/her inactions? In the hypothetical, should the person who knowingly left the newborn to die be punished by society for his inaction? And if not, why? Is not the point of law to punish morally and ethically wrong actions that damage society?

That may change

[WindBourne]

Supposedly, the dems will be pushing similar laws that Colorado just enacted (I found it interesting that a republican leaning paper feels that brakes on corrupt congressmen is not needed). [rockymountainnews.com] If so, then it will help to stop the corruption. Of course, I suspect that lopeholes will be left, but we will see.

Re:and you?

[partenon]

Perfect comment. It shows *why* capitalism is better than any other option. You worked, you win. But... :-)

Here in Brazil, our government has broken the patents for some AIDS drugs, and started distributing it to people. The american big pharmas sued the brazilian government. And guess what? The big pharmas lose, "because global patent regulations stipulate a patent can be broken for the benefit of public health". So, while I agree entirely w/ you, I also support our government's initiative in this particular case, because its an extreme action for an extreme case.