By Pasqualina Curcio on May 10, 2020
There are diseases they call orphans, also known as forgotten diseases. It seems that few people do research on them like black fever, malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, sleeping sickness, or Chagas disease.
There are others which are chosen by the pharmaceutical industry to go to the top priority list in terms of resources for Research and Development (R&D) like cancer, cardiovascular diseases, mental diseases, neurological disorders, baldness, wrinkles, sexual impotence, cellulite and even adaptation to time zones.
Today, the most widely focused on, for many valid reasons, is the Covid-19.
According to a report published by Doctors without Borders, there is a fatal imbalance in the world; diseases that account for 90% of morbidity are the subject of only 10% of global research’. Of the nearly 150,000 clinical trials conducted worldwide each year, only 1.4% focus on the neglected diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people.
They say the pharmaceutical industry gives priority to Research and Development for drugs for diseases whose prevalence and incidence is highest in the richest countries, i.e. where there are better markets, and forgets the diseases that land on the poor.
This statement is partly true, but not entirely, how do you explain that in the face of avian flu and H1N1 the pharmaceutical industry desperately sought a vaccine, but not against HIV/AIDS? Why, if diabetes affects 246 million people, most of whom have high incomes, has there not been enough resources thrown at it to develop a definitive cure?
Other factors influence the decision of the pharmacists like the type of disease and the type of drug they are looking for.
Highly contagious and lethal
Highly contagious and lethal diseases (smallpox, avian flu, H1N1, Covisd-19) not only put the lives of even the owners of pharmaceutical companies at risk, but social quarantine is the right protocol for containing the spread, affecting nothing more and nothing less than the world’s gross domestic product. This is why the immediate interest of the industry to develop the vaccine or cure has such urgency, unlike those diseases whose transmission can be relatively controlled, for example HIV, or influenza which although directly contagious is not as lethal.
Vaccine, cure, or chronification of diseases.
Unless it is a highly contagious and a very lethal disease, it is more profitable for the pharmaceutical industry to develop improvements to palliative treatments for diseases than to cure them or prevent their occurrence. This is why it prefers to invest in improving treatments for diabetes, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure, cholesterol and HIV, rather than finding the ultimate cure and breaking the dependency on the drugs.
To take one example, the pharmaceutical industry would lose some $276 billion from the sale of antiretroviral treatments by 2050 if it found a vaccine or cure for HIV.
Richard Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Medicine, said in 2003: “It is common for pharmaceutical companies to be interested in lines of research, not to cure, but only to chronicle illnesses with chronic drugs, which are much more profitable than those that cure completely and once and for all.
By the way, Cuba has made progress in developing a therapeutic vaccine against HIV/AIDS called Teravac-VIH.
Patents, the solution or the problem?
Patents are supposed to be created to encourage research and development. These rights grant the pharmaceutical industry exclusivity of production and distribution for 20 years, which is equivalent to saying that it legally grants it, I repeat, legally, the power of the monopoly with all the perversions that this implies when dealing with goods associated with health and life such as medicines.
John Sulston, 2002 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine, and Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, stated in 2008 during a Conference called “Who Owns Science”: “Patent monopolies are considered to be a driver of innovation, but in reality, they hinder the advancement of science and innovation. (…) Another problem is that the social benefits derived from innovation do not match the private income related to the patent system”.
Covid-19
Highly contagious but not very lethal, Covid-19 records, in just 5 months, 4 million cases, of which 1,375,000 have recovered and 275,000 have died. The social quarantine worldwide will produce an economic recession of at least 3% in 2020 according to the UN, and even personalities like the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom have been infected.
Without ruling out the hypothesis that it is a biological weapon created by the United States, the pharmaceutical industry, as was to be expected, has turned to Research and Development for the Covid-19 vaccine, because of its characteristics it is not the type of disease to be made chronic.
According to WHO, six projects have begun clinical trials and human trials, and 77 other pre-clinical trial investigations worldwide. Humanity as a whole hopes that soon, very soon, we will be able to have this vaccine. And very likely we will.
In this case, and to the disappointment of the pharmaceutical industry, there is no patent here.
World Trade Organization members, at the Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001, agreed to relax patent rights for pharmaceuticals especially when it comes to protecting public health in situations of national emergency.
It is the case that Covid-19 is not a national health emergency, it is global, it is a pandemic, so once the technology for the production of the vaccine is developed, it should be, without a hint, available to the whole of humanity without the possibility of excluding anyone.
Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize for Economics, 1998, said, “There are serious problems that must be taken into account even in the most elementary global ethic. Among them are patent laws that restrict the use of drugs that can save lives and that, moreover, do not help to encourage medical research aimed at developing non-repeatable drugs (such as vaccines).
Let’s add to the list of good wishes for a post-pandemic world a system of research and development that responds to the needs of humanity instead of privileging the economic and particular interests of the transnational pharmaceutical companies.
The patent system that contributes to the chronification of diseases must certainly be reviewed and research and development by state institutions must be urgently strengthened.
Source: Ultimas Noticias, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau