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Life Before Profit

5 Reasons to Stand Firm on CLs for Cancer Drugs


1. Compulsory licensing is legitimate. Compulsory licences are explicitly allowed under the 2001 Doha Declaration on Trips and the Thai Public Health and Patent Act (section 51). Thailand's previous use of compulsory licences was fully compliant with international and national law. Governments all over the world, including rich ones, use compulsory licences to protect the public interest, ensure equitable access, promote innovation and control anti-competitive prices. Thailand has the right to protect its citizens from illness. Threats, real or imaginary, from vested interests should play no role in Thailand's decision to protect its citizens from death and disease through the use of compulsory licences.
	2. Compulsory licences save lives. Without compulsory licensing, Thailand could not afford to offer universal access to effective but very expensive treatments for cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other conditions. If there are no compulsory licences, poor people will die, not because there is no available treatment but because they don't have enough money.
Money saved by compulsory licensing can finance an expanded national health-care programme. By breaking up monopolies, compulsory licensing allows competition, which results in enormous savings in the price of medicines. Previous licences on essential drugs for HIV/Aids, cancer and cardiovascular diseases resulted in dramatic savings that have not only allowed universal access to treatment for these diseases but also financed budgets to expand treatment of other serious illnesses such as renal failure. 3. Thailand can have compulsory licensing without affecting trade. Many Thai business sectors have enjoyed GSP benefits with the US, but these will now end not because of compulsory licensing, but because Thai purchasing power per person has crossed the threshold for graduating from GSP. All three firms owning the patents of the anti-cancer drugs proposed for compulsory licences are European, so this should not directly affect Thai-US trade relations. In the year following Thailand's first three compulsory licences, exports to the US increased, even for products enjoying GSP privileges. 4. Compulsory licences will not prevent Thai access to new drugs. When Abbott refused to register Aluvia in Thailand, Lopi/Rito from India was registered instead with the same quality but much lower prices. The refusal by a firm to register a key drug can be grounds for a compulsory licence. And compulsory licences will not stop innovation. Compulsory licences provide access to drugs for those who could not otherwise afford them. Pharmaceutical companies will still profit from their main markets the rich countries and rich people in poor countries and can still fund research and development. Certainly compulsory licences do not kill the pharmaceutical industry. Thailand has so far issued only seven compulsory licences on essential, life-saving, expensive drugs. Between 1969 and 1993, Canada issued 613 licences, enjoyed the lowest prices for drugs in the developed world and had a more vigorous pharmaceutical industry than the US. 5. Objections to Thailand's use of compulsory licensing from supporters of transnational pharmaceutical companies are often based upon untruthful, misleading or ignorant assertions and assumptions designed to appeal to prejudice. The myths that they propagate include claims that patents protect access to medicines for the poor, that drug researchers can be motivated only by patents and that monopoly prices are the only way of funding research. History has shown these self-serving claims to be false.

Associate Professor Dr. Jiraporn Limpananont Mr. Jon Ungphakorn Thai Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (TNP+) Foundation for Consumers AIDS Access Foundation Centre for AIDS Rights (CAR) Thai NGO Coalition on AIDS (TNCA)

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