A new approach to pharmaceutical innovations

Because much of the plan’s cost would be borne by the more affluent countries, it must be supportable by moral and prudential arguments that their citizens would find compelling. The best moral arguments appeal to the catastrophic effects of the present system. By granting monopolies for advanced medicines, this system prevents market competition that would dramatically reduce the price of these medicines and thereby make them more widely accessible. To preserve such monopoly rewards, millions of poor people are paying with their lives. These great ongoing harms are foreseeable. And they are avoidable, as is shown by the enhanced patent regime I have sketched. In order to encourage the development of new medicines, we do not need to violate the human rights of the global poor by denying them access to life-saving drugs at competitive market prices.

Six significant prudential considerations further recommend the reform to citizens of the affluent countries. It would gain us much goodwill in the developing world, would create high-value jobs in pharmaceutical research, and would dramatically lower the cost of patented essential drugs and of medical insurance also in our more affluent countries.

In addition, more rapidly increasing medical knowledge combined with a stronger and more diversified arsenal of medical interventions would facilitate more effective responses to public health problems in the future and would reduce the danger our affluent societies face from invasive diseases. The 2003 SARS outbreak illustrates both points: dangerous diseases can rapidly transit from poor-country settings into cities in the industrialised world (Toronto); and the current neglect of the medical needs of poor populations leaves us unprepared to deal with such problems when we are suddenly confronted with them.

Last, not least, we stand to realise great personal and social gains from working with others, nationally and internationally, toward overcoming the pre-eminent problem of our age: the horrendous and largely avoidable morbidity and mortality among the global poor.