World Trade Organization meetings tend to be a sideshow for the childish and sometimes violent protests, outrageous demands and riotous behavior. The current meeting in Hong Kong is no different.
While leftist agitators claim they are all about helping the poor, among their real goals is to undermine drug companies’ patents. And the target for this meeting: Switzerland-based Roche, maker of Tamiflu, the prescription drug that many health experts believe to be the most effective treatment for the bird flu.
Generally, the activists have targeted others such as the makers of anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS patients, but the worldwide concern over the bird flu makes Tamiflu especially vulnerable this time.
A WTO loophole allows governments to waive patent rights so that generic copies of a drug can be made in order to deal with public health emergencies, such as a shortage of a critical medicine. But where is the access crisis to justify stealing patents here?
International papers have been filled with stories explaining that Roche has—through voluntary contracts—identified 12 potential partners, including China and India, that could be licensed to produce Tamiflu.
The company will also donate 3 million treatments to the World Health Organization that can be used to curb a pandemic.
Those greedy capitalists should be made of sterner stuff, to paraphrase Shakespeare.
The truth is that the brand name drug manufacturers go to great lengths, and expense, to ensure their drugs get to the poorest countries at little or no cost.
In return for their generosity, some of the drug companies’ products are often redirected from the poor to wealthier countries and sold on the black market.
And, in a modern variation of the old Little Red Hen story, while none of the liberal activists want to help the drug companies pay for the work—the research and development that creates the new drugs—they DO want access to the finished product—for free.
The Little Red hen said "No, No!"
Roche, by contrast, has found a voluntary, contractual way to say "Yes!"