IBUS 3312 - International Management
Pharmaceutical Companies, Intellectual Property, and the Global AIDS Epidemic
Analysis
While this case is literally full of negative aspects, we will only focus on the main points for both arguments. Pharmaceutical companies want to be sure that the products they spend years and millions of dollars to create are not easily reproduced and sold at discount prices. The profits pharmaceuticals make of their patented products are supposed to refinance new research. So taking away their exclusive distribution rights and allowing other manufacturers to just copy the product and sell it at minimal costs also harms the innovative processes in which new and better drugs are developed [1]. Those
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If you look at how everything has developed since AIDS was first regarded as s major threat to public health in the beginning of the 1980’s it could be said that a lot of progress has been made. Not in a way where infected individuals around the world get the treatment they need or the developing countries get completely the support necessary, but today the world is closer to that goal than years before. This is important to outline because people tend to forget the progress been made, as they are only searching for a certain ending or result. The final solution to the dilemma between distribution of drugs to all people in need and the costly and continuous research required to find a cure, is not in reach [3].
What would Help?
An important point is that every time the pharmaceuticals yield a little bit to the grounds of intellectual property, big problems start arising everywhere. This could make us wonder if the pharmaceuticals would have yielded completely to what the developing countries were asking, would have people suffering from this terrible virus really gotten the help they needed? It is difficult to answer this question and as seen on the case the solution isn’t as easy as it looks. It wasn’t just a matter of letting generic drugs be produced and sold, there also had to be some regulations to this process to make sure that it was really helping people in developing countries.
Economic: Globalization of the pharmaceutical industry is an exciting opportunity to have research and development done at cheaper prices in other countries. However, this could be a double edged sword for companies because it is easy for other countries, such as India, to produce generic versions of the drug in bulk.
Pharmaceutical companies are provided with temporary monopoly rights on the production of new drugs which result in a higher cost on consumers. If competing companies were allowed to produce generic forms of those drugs, consumers will be able to afford those medications even in cases where those consumers have no insurance coverage. The company responsible for developing and inventing the original medication could be offered incentives to invent in the future by either obtaining tax breaks or NIH funding for future research. They could even be offered a percentage of the sales of the generic drugs. Economist Gary S. Becker advocates dropping many FDA requirements that, in his opinion, provide no additional safety measures but rather delay the development of new drugs.[12] Betamethasone, for example, has been part of the standard prenatal care in Europe since the late 1970’s while it got adopted in the U.S. after 1997. On many occasions, the FDA ignores all scientific evidence concerning certain drugs because the manufacturer did not follow their mandated bureaucratic standards.
“What I learned from the film was that generic drugs are selling better than the branded medication I assume it is because of the cost, of the branded are too high for consumers in the United States to afford to buy it. In the United States the pharmaceutical company’s go through a strenuous trial before they can get a patent for a medication to sell to the public. They are under strict regulations in the United States by the Federal Food & Drug Administration, they go through clinical trials before they can get a patent for medication to be distributed to the public. It also references the point that weak nations must have access to reasonably priced medications, treatments and vaccines is also creating a huge opportunity such as Africa.
The pharmaceutical industry has been taking advantage of healthcare by implementing laws modeled to benefit the industry greatly, while consumers have struggled. The drug industry uses their own sources and self-sponsored research to further their influence in healthcare. Although the pharmaceutical industry provides healthcare with good medical resources, it is highly costly for consumers due to the manipulation of laws and healthcare.
Although ninety-five percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are in developing countries, the impact of this epidemic is global. In South Africa, where one in four adults are living with the disease, HIV/AIDS means almost certain death for those infected. In developed countries however, the introduction of antiretroviral drugs has meant HIV/AIDS is treated as a chronic condition rather than a killer disease. In developing countries like South Africa, the drugs that allow people to live with the disease elsewhere in the world, are simply too expensive for individuals and governments to afford at market price.
Just as clearly, experience shows that the right approaches, applied quickly enough with courage and resolve, can and do result in lower HIV infection rates and less suffering for those affected by the epidemic. An ever-growing AIDS epidemic is not inevitable; yet, unless action against the epidemic is scaled up drastically, the damage already done will seem minor compared with what lies ahead. This may sound dramatic, but it is hard to play down the effects of a disease that stands to kill more than half of the young adults in the countries where it has its firmest hold—most of them before they finish the work of caring for their children or providing for their elderly parents. Already, 18.8 million people around the world have died of AIDS, 3.8 million of them children. Nearly twice that many—34.3 million—are now living with HIV, the virus [9].
The tools created to make medicine for AIDS patients have been very helpful and important to society. Ever since tools were created to make medicine to reduce the symptoms of AIDS, doctors have been doing everything they can to provide patients with the correct care so that they can survive. Due to this, people have gone far enough to the point where they made medicine cheaper and affordable by insurance making it available for many classes of people. “We won’t see the end of AIDS,” says Gates, in terms of there being no cure therefore it’s not much of a point in not making the medicine cheaper. The tools to cure
Only a few diseases in modern history have been so devastating and impose a direct global public health threat to be referred to as “The modern plague” [1, 2]. The Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is considered to be the causative agent of one of the deadliest pandemics our generation have witnessed collecting over 30 million lives worldwide since the 1980s [3], with 3.4 million children under the age of 15 living with the virus as of 2012 [4]. In 1983, HIV has been linked to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) by Robert Gallo and his collaborators in a series of four papers published in Science magazine [5, 6]. Since then, research has been targeting
AIDS, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, have been a worldwide issue for years. There have been countless controversies about AIDS but not many know the real truth behind this disease. AIDS epidemic have crucially changed American medicine procedures and greatly induced economic and social changes in the United States of America.
The United States is notorious for many things such as being one of the most powerful and wealthy nations on the planet. However, something that most people don’t know is that the United States has 1.1 million citizens ill with the HIV virus. Something even more astounding is that of those 1.1 million only about 200,000 are receiving medication and have the virus under control due to the high cost of the medication. Many pharmaceutical companies have begun to find gaps within the government patent system. As rivalry has started to grow, many of these pharmaceutical companies are beginning to use product patents to create a monopoly. The ending result is to change the patent law and increase restrictions in order to provide fairness and reasonable prices.
According to the World Health Organization, 70 million people have been infected with the incurable HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). Since the epidemic began in the early 1980’s, 35 million people have died and according to 2016 statistics, 36.7 million people are still living with the HIV/AIDS virus. In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control estimates 1.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS with an astonishing with 1 in 7 people unaware they currently have the virus in their system, and a few finding out the disease has progressed to AIDS (“HIV/AIDS”).
The availability of patents for pharmaceutical products has been a huge controversy in the patent system over the years. The reason for this is that the necessary operating licenses of which the inventor will benefit cost an amount of money which maybe developing countries will not be able to afford. There are two approaches to follow in this debate, the legal side in which the law must be followed and the human side, in which the needs of people are taken into account regardless of other things. These two options lead to a question: should the patentability of pharmaceutical products be excluded in order to protect the right to health of those who can not pay these products?
In the early 2020’s an oral medication was developed to treat HIV/AIDS, eventually this medication came to be the new ‘cure’ for the infection. In the following years, HIV was no longer an issue or a cause for concern, as health professionals declared an HIV/AIDS free world. Nine years later, in 2031 a new strain of HIV emerged. This new strain has become resistant to the original oral medication that ‘cured’ HIV/AIDS years before. In addition, the virus has mutated to a point in which that it is spreading at twice the pace as the original strain. The virus is more aggressive and no course of previous treatment has proved effective in mitigating the effects. Thus, individuals have come under greater risk of being infected
When someone creates something, that is solely from their mind, whether it be literature, a play, a piece of artwork, it is Intellectual Property. Intellectual Property is important because it allows the economy to grow, as well as captures the devotion of its inventors and creators, by becoming financially beneficial. Intellectual property helps promote development and aims for a more economic growth in overall well-being. In direct relation to pharmaceutical drugs, the creation of the drugs are never ending, and also supplies a huge source of financial growth for all of the developing companies. In fact, “The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion) [in 2002] …” (The Truth about Drug
Cipla should look to protect their patents on particular medications and explains why rules governing intellectual property rights in industrialized nations should not apply to poorer countries.