Michael Ravvin, Department of Political Science, Columbia University, 420 W. 118th Street, New York, NY 10027 Email: mer2133{at}columbia.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract The existing intellectual property regime discourages the innovation of, and access to, essential medicines for the poor in developing countries. A successful proposal to reform the existing system must address these challenges of access and innovation. This essay will survey the problems in the existing pharmaceutical patent system and offer critical analysis (...) of some reform proposals. I will argue that existing mechanisms that are intended to mitigate the harms of the current pharmaceutical patent system, such as bulk buying, differential pricing and compulsory licenses, are inadequate and perhaps even counter-productive over the long-term. Other incentive mechanisms based on push funding, such as government research grants, are inefficient and limited in scope. Pull mechanisms, which offer some reward for successful pharmaceutical innovations, offer a more promising incentive mechanism. I will evaluate three pull mechanisms -- Priority Review Vouchers, Advance Market Commitment (AMC) and the Health Impact Fund -- on the basis of their capacity to incentivize access and innovation, as well as their efficiency and political feasibility. Though the Health Impact Fund appears to be the most promising proposal, more work must be done to overcome challenges of its implementation. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to lifelong severe poverty, with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. This problem is solvable, despite its magnitude.

Department of Economics, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr NW, Calgary AB, T2N 1N4, Canada. Tel.: +1403220 5861; Fax: +1403220 5861; Email: ahollis{at}ucalgary.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> . Abstract The Health Impact Fund has been proposed as an optional, comprehensive advance market commitment system offering financial payments or ‘prizes’ to patentees of new drugs, which are sold globally at an administered low price. The Fund is designed to offer payments based on the therapeutic impact (...) of the drugs or vaccines, so that innovators will have efficient incentives to develop drugs that maximize health gains. Consumers would have improved access to such drugs because of low prices. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Multilateral and bilateral trade agreements have become important vehicles by which US multinational corporations, through close collaboration with government officials, are striving, amongst other objectives, for increasingly stringent global intellectual property protection (GIPP), particularly over what they term “innovative” pharmaceuticals. This chapter explores the evolution and structural dynamics of GIPP. It particularly considers the hypothesis that GIPP represents a corporate-driven ideology whose legitimacy in a democratic polity is undermined by its uncertain foundation in public health research and inadequate integration with (...) norms of bioethics and health law, including international human rights. This detailed analysis begins with consideration of the domestic evolution of GIPP from within the US patent system. This may reveal how many of its important structural features had their roots in a domestic profit-making ideology. The chapter then examines the critical initial globalization role of the US Trade Act 1974, particularly section 301. This permitted US industry to request an investigation by the US International Trade Commission of foreign nations whose practices allegedly caused it material injury. The Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is analyzed as a mature component of GIPP by which increased intellectual property rights [intellectual monopoly privileges] in particular over pharmaceuticals, were linked with strong trade sanctions. The sophisticated contribution to GIPP made by the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act 2003 (US) is then evaluated, particularly its prohibition of Federal Government medicine price setting and its requirement for a study of pharmaceutical price controls in other developed countries. In each case the extent to which GIPP attempted or failed to integrate its corporate-designed principles with basic norms of bioethics, public health law and international human rights is discussed. (shrink)