Transcript Beyond Gene Prediction

The need for a treaty to support
research that enters the public
domain
Tim Hubbard, TACD, October 2002
An alternative economic model for
funding drug R&D
Tim Hubbard, TACD, October 2002
Ideas from experience as scientist
• HGP - half way to a corporate structure
– Large scale projects delivering high quality, complete “products”
(rather than research publications) can be conducted in the public
domain if the management is right
• IP has fewer benefits to society in a scientific age
– Disclosure required less: Many scientists, so most ideas occur to
many, or are can be deduced from what idea can do
– IP supports payback for upfront research: would not be required
under a different economic model
• Openness is less hassle; drives progress forwards; exposes
errors
– Even companies agree - SNPs consortium
Does industry need IP to get the job
done?
• Other industries operate economics models which
rely much less heavily on IP, e.g. microchips.
• Issue is how to fund research
• Médicins San Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders)
– DNDi (drugs for neglected diseases initiative)
– Fund R&D from public domain
– Charge drugs at cost (no IP)
Lots of complex legal solutions to
problems of access to drugs are being
suggested.
• Modifications to TRIPS
• Differential pricing with complex mechanisms to
decide prices and ensure product does not move
between pricing areas
• Etc. etc.
• If this was software, the conclusion would be that it
is time to rewrite the code!
Funding structures
R&D
Drugs
Public drug payments
Cost
Access to Drugs
+ Marketing
+ R&D
Cost + Profit
Free
People treated
Funding structures
R&D
Drugs
Global R&D
Fund
Public drug payments
Generics
Global Research & Development Fund
• Each country collects % of that spent on drugs
– tax at point of sale; fraction of health care spending
– would require international agreement
– country would have some ability to target funding to
health care issues relevant to its populations
• Funding by research fund could be ‘infectious’
– aka GNU public license used for Open Source Software.
– anything resulting from it would be in the public domain
How to address dangers for R&D fund model
(Lots of R&D paid for; no new drugs)
• Funding tightly tied to success in creating drugs that
go on to have measurable healthcare benefits
• Continuous monitoring of progress by R&D funding
agency, aka management of Human Genome Project
(and how projects are managed inside pharma today)
• Competition between multiple R&D funding
agencies (to make sure they are efficient too)
Example of change
• European dairy farming, changed from:
– Make as much milk as possible
– Make a fixed quota of milk
• Consequences
– Market for milk quota
– 50% of high protein feed manufactures went out of
business
– Industry survived
New world order
• Companies are global organisations
• Quangos (unelected) are global organisations
– WTO, WIPO
• NGOs are global organisations
– NGOs spring up to match a global organisation
• Governments are national organisations
– Political parties are national organisations
• Global organisations can play national organisations off
against each other
NGO
• Recognised “brand name”
• Could mean “New, Global, Open”
• World political party, might be a new mechanism to
counteract attempts by “Global organisations” to
play countries off against each other
Public domain and IP issues
• World Business Council for Sustainable Development Project on
Intellectual Property Rights
• Royal Society brainstorming on the future of IPR
• EU discussions concerning open source software
• OECD working group on Issues of Access to Publicly Funded
Research Data
• Aventis scenarios workshop on Sustainable Health Care
• Medicin san Frontiers IP policy for DNDi
• Rockefeller Foundation workshop on Collective Management of
Intellectual Property
Context
• There is an ongoing “War” between forces of
ownership and openness
• The “battle” for openness of the human genome
sequence was won
but it nearly went the other way…
• Increased data ownership limits freedom
• Rich world ownership inhibits world equality
The future of ideas
•
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•
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Creativity and innovation always builds on the past
The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it
Free societies enable the future by limiting the past
Ours is less and less a free society
– Copyright
– Patents
– Digital control
Lawrence Lessig, OSCON 2002
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000438
Options to moderate monopoly effects
of gene patents
• Make compulsory licensing easier and less costly
– A government or a judge issues a non-voluntary license
to use a patent.
– Compulsory licensing can introduce competition and
lower prices.
– Compulsory licensing can prevent a patent holder from
blocking R&D and/or the development of new products.
• Do not allow gene based patents
– Already much more difficult
– Patent law currently being reviewed at WIPO, WTO