Drug Patents and Morality - Research Paper Example

Drug Patents and Morality Introduction Life-saving medicines and medical technologies, a scarce supply of current drugs that meet the healthcare requirements of most people, are the basis for almost all public health initiatives intended to minimize mortality and morbidity rates in developing countries or in the Third World. Nevertheless, they are ever more inaccessible to these people. A number of developments add to this extremely difficult problem: earlier or traditional medicines are ever more made useless because of prevalent conflict and opposition; no new drugs and/or medical technologies are introduced into the market when the main peoples affected are low-income citizens residing in developing nations; and, most important nowadays, newer drugs and medical technologies are patented and priced disproportionately. This paper addresses the question “Is it moral to withhold drugs that will save lives in the ‘developing world’ because the patents to those drugs are owned by profit-making corporations?” The author argues that it is indeed not moral. A Moral Dilemma In a time that is accepting the free and open market at a global stage-- subjected to the demands of the wealthiest nations, particularly the United States-- and that views life-saving drugs to be a basic need, we should recognize that market factors by themselves do not meet the health requirements of people residing in developing nations (Silverman, Lydecker, & Lee, 1992). Not merely does pharmaceutical patenting in time lead to a kind of market collapse (Hoffman et al., 1994), but it is a moral failure as well. It is the failure to understand that availability of sufficient health care and medication is a moral concern and that global health is the duty of the public domain. Governments have a duty to make sure that their citizens can gain from medical developments, such as better health. According to Koivusalo (2010), outside the moral concerns created by this typical denial of health care and treatment to a vast number of people, the mere aggravation of the epidemic in poor nations over the past decade attests to the enormity of the failure of pharmaceutical patenting. Numerous major pharmaceutical firms objected furiously against the manner in which their patents were violated or disregarded in several developing countries. To a number of radical consumer advocates, patenting of life-saving drugs is immoral and should be removed, and the discarding of these patents is apparently social justice (Nenow, 2001). However, for the trademarked pharmaceutical companies, patent violation is certainly offensive. A lot of multinational pharmaceutical firms have not consistently been visibly openhanded to the populations of the developing world (Boateng, 2004). They have been accused of exploiting their patents to extract money from the low-income populations of developing countries and of failing to venture effectively in the creation of medicines or medical technologies to prevent or treat illnesses widespread in the Third World. They have priced unreasonably. They have taken advantage of ‘transfer pricing’ (Forman, 2007), making the import costs of unprocessed goods excessive that they could declare they had gained no earnings and thus should not pay taxes. As argued by the distributive justice assumption, justice demands that innovators and inventors be compensated since they provide a valuable service to the public (Sterckx, 2001). It would be unjust to let the people be ‘freeloaders’ to the detriment of others who give themselves to the duty of innovating and inventing. Freeloaders or individuals who did not put in resources, effort, or time in innovation and invention should not be permitted to contend with the creator within standard market conditions (Sterckx, 2001). Hence, the innovator and inventor should be given special rights. However, when evaluated in the perspective of the rationale of pharmaceutical patents, this premise appears quite questionable. Primarily, the problem emerges whether justice does not demand a fair access to medicines as well, which is hampered by the system of patenting. Another issue under consideration is whether justice does demand that innovators and inventors be compensated with patents, giving them power to determine who may lawfully use the creation (Pecoul, 2001). Or, does the argument imply that justice demands that inventors be rewarded special ownership rights on their creations? The error is to combine the invented item which makes an individual worthy of compensation with what that compensation should be. Rights of ownership are not the single likely compensation. Other rewards are status, influence, security, recognition, awards, payments, and public support. Another issue with the rationale of pharmaceutical patents on the basis of justice is whether it is just to reward inventors with compensations that are too much. Numerous trademarked pharmaceutical companies persistently attempt to gain expansions of their patents’ protection conditions, and they usually pull it off. This trend, called ‘patent evergreening’, prevents manufacturers of generic medicines (Sterckx, 2001, 65). Generic medicines are usually much more affordable than branded drugs. Even in the United States, as reported by the Kaiser Foundation, the cost of a prescription branded medicine is roughly thrice greater than the cost of a generic medicine (Sterckx, 2001, 65). In the Third Word, according to Forman (2007), the price difference is usually doubly arresting. Obviously, the people pay double: they have to continue paying unnaturally high costs for medicines, and the fees of a legal institution exploited by firms to holdup competition. Even presuming that the system of patenting, as people recognize it, could be rationalized on the basis of justice, the rationale of the global launching of pharmaceutical patents on such bases would still be debatable. As fairly commented by Dan Brock: (Sterckx, 2001, 66): It can quite plausibly be argued that in not respecting patents developing countries are free riding on the research and development efforts of drug companies that are supported by the prices of drugs in countries in which patents are respected. But that free riding and resulting unfairness may not be enough to make it, all things considered, morally wrong for developing countries not to respect product patents… When developing countries choose not to respect product patents as their only effective means of making available pharmaceuticals necessary to save lives and protect the health of their citizens, doing so is arguably a step towards greater justice between the developed and developing world. Certainly, the health dilemma in the Third World has arrived at an impossible scale. More than a third of the total population of the world has no access to life-saving medicines (Koivusalo, 2010). The importance of guaranteeing access to the needed medicines and medical technologies cannot be taken for granted any longer. Thoroughly and seriously studying the global pharmaceutical patent system is a major step towards a successful solution. Conclusions In order to attain more moral global health results, health measures should be motivated by health concerns and should consider wider health policy needs, such as the requirements and demands of particular national health institutions. It is hence crucial to understand that the differences in objectives in major policy areas are not essentially between the interests of developing and developed nations, but between the interests of pharmaceutical companies and priorities of health policy, and public health guidelines and trade policy and national commercial priorities. If shared priorities in health guidelines across nations remain overlooked, they are more quickly weakened by the lobbying activities of pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, governments that successfully justify the objectives of multinational drug companies at the global stage may effectively destabilize the interests and wellbeing of their own health institutions and people, who may gain from more effective government involvement in pharmaceutical pricing and strategy. The problem is hence not just about the morality of coercing developing nations to abide by similar or more severe conditions for patents than what is demanded in developed nations but also the level to which the absence of understanding of shared policy priorities restricts and postpones initiatives that could meet the health needs of all nations. References Boateng, O. (2004). The Profits that Kill. New African, 22+ Forman, L. (2007). Trade Rules, Intellectual Property and the Rights to Health. Ethics & International Affairs, 21(3), 337+ Hoffman, W.M., Kamm, J.B., Frederick, R.E. & Petry, E. Jr. (1994). Emerging Global Business Ethics. Westport, CT: Quorum Books. Koivusalo, M. (2010). Common Health Policy Interests and the Shaping of Global Pharmaceutical Policies. Ethics & International Affairs, 24(4), 395+ Nenow, L. (2001). To Patent or Not to Patent: The European Union’s New Biotech Directive. Houston Journal of International Law, 23(3), 569. Pecoul, B. (2001). Fighting for Survival. Harvard International Review, 23(3), 60. Silverman, M., Lydecker, M. & Lee, P.R. (1992). Bad Medicine: The Prescription Drug Industry in the Third World. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Sterckx, S. (2001). Patents and Access to Drugs in Developing Countries: An Ethical Analysis. Developing World Bioethics, 4(1), 1471-8731. Read More