The row between Thailand and drugmakers is far from over, even though Abbott recently reduced prices on its Kaletra AIDS drug, and Merck and Sanofi-Aventis supposedly are in talks with the government. Abbott, for instance, continues to threaten to withhold meds not yet registered for sale in the country.

A larger issue, as Brook Baker of Northeastern University’s law school points out. is the ongoing jousting over the right of poor nations to issue compulsory licenses. As he make clear in a scathing essay in a Thai newspaper called ‘The Eight Deadly Lies of Big Pharma,’ the mechanism is coming under increasing attack. Here a few excerpts:

Lie # 2: Roger Bates, American Enterprise Institute: “It is generally understood that compulsory licences should be confined to ‘public health crises, including those relating to HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics,’ which represent a ‘national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency’.”

Truth: This assertion is the most widely circulated and most repeated misrepresentation that Big Pharma has propagated. The Doha Declaration of 2001 is exquisitely clear that, “each member has the right to grant compulsory licences and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licences are granted”. Although there are special rules for emergencies that permit expedited procedures for granting a licence, the right to issue compulsory licences is not limited to public-health emergencies.

Lie # 7: All of the sources from Big Pharma previously quoted have said that compulsory licences will reduce incentives for innovation.

Truth: All of Asia (except Japan) and all of Africa comprise only 5.1 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market, according to Information Management Group. Even though low- and middle-income markets are growing faster than developed country markets, drug companies continue to make the vast bulk of their profits from sales in the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan, which collectively buy nearly 89 per cent of drugs by dollar volume. Drug companies always argue that compulsory licences interfere with their R&D incentives, but they never admit that developing countries’ compulsory licences never affect their monopoly profits in rich country markets. How can South and Southeast Asia’s infinitesimal share of the global market really affect R&D incentive?”

Baker closes with this tongue-lashing:
“To withhold life-saving medicines from the market in retaliation for lawful use of lawful flexibilities is not only unjustifiable, it is abusive and unconscionable.”

You can read the entire essay here.

Hat tip to PharmaGossip.[tags]Brook Baker, Compulsory Licensing, Generics, Thailand[/tags]