[Mb-civic] A Double Dose of Failure - Sebastian Mallaby - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

A Double Dose of Failure

By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, November 7, 2005; Page A21

Like Hurricane Katrina, the preparations for avian flu expose the 
weakness of American government. Pressing dilemmas get passed back and 
forth between executive and legislature, and between federal government 
and the states; lobbies get multiple chances to confuse and paralyze 
policy. Flood walls don't get built. Flu preparations don't get done. 
Government lets people down, and people don't trust government.

Consider one piece of the avian flu mess: the challenge of stockpiling 
the potentially lifesaving drug Tamiflu. The challenge presents the 
standard intellectual-property dilemma: Should we respect the patent 
rights of Roche, Tamiflu's maker, thereby strengthening incentives for 
companies to develop tomorrow's cures? Or should we force Roche to 
surrender its property, thereby allowing the government to stockpile 
Tamiflu faster and more cheaply?

Some countries have come up with a clear answer. Taiwan says frankly 
that it will manufacture its own version of Tamiflu, and never mind the 
patents. Its scientists claim that, after a mere 18 days of lab work, 
they've figured out how to copy the drug and will attempt to do so on a 
large scale if necessary. India, Thailand and Argentina have all said 
they want to make the drug themselves if a pandemic materializes.

Other countries have gone the opposite route, stockpiling Tamiflu by 
buying from Roche. France has enough of the drug on hand to treat 24 
percent of its people. Britain expects to be at a similar level soon. 
But this policy of buying the drug from the patent holder works only for 
the countries that get in line early. Already some 40 governments have 
placed orders. If every country ordered enough Tamiflu to treat a fifth 
of its people, it might take Roche a full decade to deliver.

The United States has failed to get in line early. It's been weeks since 
panicky soccer dads began stockpiling Tamiflu. But the government has so 
far ordered enough of the drug and a similar medicine, Relenza, to cover 
just 1.5 percent of the population. Last week's avian flu "blueprint" 
from the Bush administration belatedly proposes to procure treatment 
courses for 75 million Americans. But Congress has yet to come up with 
the money, and the plan assumes that state and local governments will 
contribute $510 million to the procurement effort. The scope for 
argument and delay seems endless.

Meanwhile, and indeed for the next several months, the United States 
will have no significant stockpiles of Tamiflu. If the feds and the 
states resolve their burden-sharing arguments quickly, the earliest 
conceivable point at which the nation may have stockpiles equivalent to 
that of Britain or France appears to be mid-2007. In terms of getting 
access to Tamiflu, the United States has been a failure.

But the nation isn't a model of respect for intellectual property, 
either. Panicked by its own lateness, the Bush administration has 
bullied Roche into opening a new production operation in the United 
States; if Roche had refused, the administration was ready to break the 
patent. Sen. Chuck Schumer has gone further, denouncing Roche for 
elevating profits above health and demanding that the firm license its 
technology to other drugmakers or face legislation compelling it to do 
so. Coming on top of similar bullying four years ago of Bayer, the maker 
of an anti-anthrax drug, this browbeating sends a clear signal: If you 
make a drug that turns out to be really important, don't expect patent 
laws to protect you.

So the United States has the worst of both worlds. It has failed to 
secure Taiwan-style access to medicines, and it has failed to preserve 
incentives for new medical discovery. It is getting ready to pay Roche 
buckets of money for drugs that may arrive too late, because it wants to 
respect intellectual property. But at the same time it has reminded drug 
companies that, if they want to be left alone to make money, they had 
better confine themselves to unpolitical ailments such as cholesterol 
and asthma.

This is part of a pattern. It reflects the impossibility, in the 
American system, of deciding one way or the other. The Bush 
administration wants to stand up for the research-based drug industry, 
but some members of Congress speak for the generic firms; the result is 
the kind of regulatory uncertainty that deters long-term investment. 
Today Schumer might not have the clout to deliver on his threat to break 
Roche's patent, but tomorrow, who knows? One day the Democrats may 
regain a majority in Congress. One day Schumer may be secretary for 
health in a Democratic administration.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/06/AR2005110601013.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051108/b2253347/attachment.htm