Question

View the video entitled, “Should We Demand an End to Drug Patents? It’s Killing You!” In this video, Neal Asbury, host of “Truth for America” joins Thom Hartmann as they discuss the controversial issue – ending the patent protection of pharmaceutical companies for humanitarian reasons. There are strong arguments on both sides. Discuss the major issues on sacrificing intellectual property rights for humanitarian causes. What’s your opinion? Besides viewing the video, feel free to conduct an online search on the topic to collect materials for your answer. Provide those citations in your answer and articulate your argument with facts rather than emotion.

Answer 1

The expansion of Intellectual Property Rights has reduced access to life saving medicines even though promising advances in biotechnology. As the video said that the cancer treatment drug was patented by germany pharmaceutical company and charged hefty prices for the pills, which are unaffordable to the general persons.

The granting of exclusive rights must be balanced against the economic effects of higher product and trasaction costs. Hence, there is an urgent need ot strike a balance between the patent holder's rights and the humanitarian policies which promote social goals.

The reasons of no access to the life-saving medicines are considerably the giant-size prices, these hefty prices are due to IPR protection. Although TRIPS offer many safeguards to remove the negative impact of patent or patent abuse but in practice, they dont serve the need.

Doha declaration gave priority to public health over IPR and focussed more on TRIP remedies but it could not solve all the problems associated with the public health.

In my opinion patenting to be restricted considering the human need and basic health remedies.