Activists campaigning to get AIDS treatments and other critical medicines to poor people around the world propose radical changes in the financing of global pharmaceutical research and development. The activists suggest that the World Trade Organization (WTO) discard global intellectual property protections and replace them with incentive programs for scientists. The companies that research, design, and produce the drugs would no longer support large sales teams to persuade physicians to prescribe them.
New research would be financed through tax levies or other financing, which, proponents say, would bring greater efficiency and fairness to the research process. Opponents charge that such ideas represent a throwback to an era of slow-paced, government-orchestrated science.
Led by the nonprofit Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech) based in Washington, DC, the advocates want WTO members to reconsider its policy towards patents and poor countries. With WTO provisions set to take effect in many developing countries next ...
