Posted on 01/05/2005 10:55:42 PM PST by neverdem
"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 out that, according to WHO data, tropical diseases (trypanosomiasis, Chagas disease, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis) account for only 0.5 percent of deaths in high-mortality poor countries and only 0.3 percent of deaths in low-mortality poor countries.
Furthermore, many treatments already exist for many of these diseases. Schistosomiasis is treated with praziquantel for 30 cents a dose; onchocerciasis can be controlled with ivermectin (which is being provided free of charge by its manufacturer Merck & Co. for as many people as needed, for as long as needed). Lymphatic filariasis is treated successfully with a combination of ivermectin and albendazole (which are being donated free by Merck and SmithKline Beecham). Note that these treatments were not developed by WHO or MSF researchers, but by profit-making private companies.
This leaves leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), and Chagas disease without really effective treatments. If these horrific tropical diseases are not the main causes of suffering and death among the poor in the developing world, what is?
Tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS account for nearly 18 percent of the disease burden in the poorest countries. Effective methods of prevention and treatments exist for these diseases. Diarrheal diseases kill 1.8 million people each year and acute lower respiratory infections kill 2 million children under five annually. Vitamin A deficiency blinds 500,000 children per year. Again, cheap and effective treatments for these diseases already exist. About 25 percent of people in low-mortality poor countries also die of such "rich country diseases" as heart attacks and cancer. Current research on these diseases will benefit people in poorer countries as their disease profiles converge on those of today's rich countries.
As the IPN report notes, poor countries "currently benefit from drugs that were originally developed for wealthier markets"—treatments such as vaccines for polio, pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, and measles, and drugs to treat tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, pneumonia, and many others. In fact, 90 percent of the products on the WHO's list of 319 essential medicines were originally discovered and/or developed by private companies in wealthier countries.
So if effective medicines are in fact available that could save millions of lives and avert much suffering among the world's poorest people, why are so many of them still sick and dying? In a word, poverty.
The abject poverty in which billions are mired is chiefly sustained by bad government economic policies. By adopting better economic policies, governments in poor countries would go a long way toward improving the health of their citizens. In addition, governments often impose high tariffs and taxes on medicines. For example, taxes account for 55 percent of the retail cost of medicines in India, 34 percent in Nigeria, 33 percent in Pakistan, 28 percent in China, and 24 percent in Mexico. And finally, in nearly all of the poorest countries, public expenditures on the military vastly outstrip those on health care.
"The health problems faced by the world's poorest populations are not caused by a lack of drugs specifically related to their problems and diseases," notes IPN. "The real problem is ensuring that these populations can actually access vital medicines." It turns out that the best way to address public health needs is through the profit motive. The IPN report correctly concludes: "A global R&D treaty, in which the profits of pharmaceutical companies are heavily taxed and their intellectual property rights undermined, would be almost certain to have the unintended consequence of effectively turning off the tap of innovation that is essential to dealing with the world's changing health problems." That would hurt the rich, but it would hurt the world's poor even more.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His new book, Liberation Biology: A Moral and Scientific Defense of the Biotech Revolution will be published in early 2005. His coverage of the COP10 conference is also being carried at Tech Central Station
Or according to political pressure, like AIDS.
Drugs can't kill people, Guns do! /Sarcasm off :D
Boo hoo. Then quit spending so much money on "health problems" that are largely really lifestyle problems.
Modern medicine and vaccinations have probably contributed more to current suffering in the world. Ravaging plagues have been eliminated, formerly incurable diseases are beaten. At one time, the survival of the fittest meant just that. Those best equipped to remain alive against the struggles of living, procreated and survived. Those who were susceptible to illness and by accident, perished.
This was how the human animal grew stronger. But today, with increasing occurrences of various maladies, folks survive and procreate. They pass along genes less able to overcome and they are more apt to fail to some yet unknown disease. While I'm not advocating killing-off the infirmed and frail, with respect to this article I note that it makes little sense to fight disease among populations who have no capability to employ any industriousness toward their own betterment. By alleviating their disease, we guarantee that we will end up with more folks in these areas with still no industry. We would sap our own research budgets aimed at alleviating illnesses in this country and in the developed world which, if successful, would at least return productive people to the workforce.
He is free to start one based on "need" and watch it go bankrupt.
--Boris
Those laws against murder also helped turn us into a bunch of sissys.
All lands (not 'countries') have been on Earth for the same amount of time. Some, with meager resources--like Japan and Hong Kong--became wealthy through industriousness and capitalism. Others, like Albania and most of Africa, remain poor. It is a cultural difference, and nothing else, which determines relative wealth and prosperity. Freedom and capitalism (basically Western Culture) have been shown over and over again to result in high living standards.
See P. J. O'Rourke's Eat the Rich for details.
--Boris
These guys are bankrupt to begin with. That's why they need OP's money to work with.
Here's info about Chagas disease from the CDC. Note the part in bold text:
"Blood transfusion recipients are at risk as well, because blood is not screened for Chagas. Therefore, the disease may be transmitted through transfusions."
I should have known that somebody would somehow tie illegal immigration to this thread.
Notice I said "unregulated", not illegal.
In the past, immigrants were subject to medical exams/quarantine.
You think I'm making this up? Read here:
http://www.uta.edu/chagas/html/doYaBord.html ("The chagas parasite has traveled from Latin America to Europe and the United States in blood transfusions, organ transplants, and migrants. ")
http://www.dpd.cdc.gov/dpdx/HTML/TrypanosomiasisAmerican.htm ("Chronic Chagas disease is a major health problem in many Latin American countries. With increased population movements, the possibility of transmission by blood transfusion has become more substantial in the United States.")
http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic327.htm ("However, infection is found frequently in immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America. According to estimates, 100,000-675,000 immigrants [in the U.S.] from Latin America are infected with T cruzi.")
Drugs don't kill people. Doctors do!
Do you need me to disabuse you of this nonsense about doctors killing about a hundred thousand per year? You can find links through my profile page, but just let me know if you need help.
Are these adjectives symptomatic of the failure to recognize the problem? The countries in question already have weak economies. They are NOT deteriorating because they were never any better to begin with. Perhaps a minor point, but it seems to me as if this post hoc reasoning denies the fact that, overwhelmingly, poverty from primitive economic systems causing lack of disease prevention and treatment is more important than disease causing poverty in these places.
The person you posted this to did not--the write-up did.
Diseases caused by drinking sewage water from the village upstream and by ignorance of the benefit of washing with soap and water are simply not very profitable for the drug companies to spend time on. Good grief...when will some of these places get out of the seventh century and buy a clue?
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