Do Drug Companies Kill Poor People
Less than 10 percent of the U.S.$73 billion spent globally every year on health research is allocated
to study 90 percent of the world's health problems,"
claimed a report from the Global Forum for Health Research (GFHR) in 2002. The GFHR is an independent foundation under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) that aims to redirect global research priorities toward the needs of the world's poorest people. Its report added, "For example, of 1,233 drugs that reached the global market between 1975 and 1997, 13 were for tropical infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the poor.
The international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) similarly issued a report in 2001 condemning eight of the world's largest 11 pharmaceutical companies, representing combined sales of nearly $117 billion, for reporting "no research activities in the last year for fatal diseases that almost exclusively affect the poor: sleeping sickness, Chagas disease and leishmaniasis."
"Drugs are not developed according to public health need, but according to profitability," bemoaned Dr. Bernard Pécoul, director of MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. "A new paradigm is urgently needed to address this fatal imbalance." Among other things MSF is calling for a potential "essential research obligation" mandate that would require companies to reinvest a percentage of pharmaceutical sales into R&D for neglected diseases, either directly or through public R&D programs. MSF also favors a global treaty on R&D for neglected diseases that could provide a framework for such mandates and help make drugs for neglected diseases global public goods.
So, distinguished international medical experts accuse companies in the developed world of putting profits over people. Millions of the world's poorest people are dying each year, they maintain, because of this alleged "10/90 Gap" in global health research priorities.
But there is less to these charges than meets the eye.
Rates of sickness and death are tragically higher in poor countries than they are in the rich countries. But can these higher rates of morbidity and mortality be chiefly blamed on the selfishness of rich pharmaceutical companies? An interesting new report, Diseases of Poverty and the 10/90 Gap, by the London-based International Policy Network (IPN) sheds considerable light on this question. (Full disclosure: I have reported on international trade issues with support from IPN in the past.
First, are 90 percent of the diseases that afflict poor people in the developing world really being ignored by pharmaceutical company researchers? IPN points...