"Pills and Profits"

For many years, I have been a supporter of the Global Justice Now organisation, which was previously known as the World Development Movement. It campaigns for a “more just and equal world,” and seeks to mobilise people across the UK with a wide range of campaigns for social justice.

Much of its focus is on less-developed countries, but it is also playing a leading role in a campaign against large corporations making massive profits from the sale of medicines.

Global Justice Now has published a report entitled “Pills and Profits,” and a central tenet of the document is that the public sector has played a pivotal role in the discovery of new medicines. It states:

“The UK government is the second largest funder country, after the US, for research and development (R&D) in diseases that predominantly affect poor countries. The UK Government spent £2.3 billion on health R&D in 2015 alone. Globally, it is estimated that the public pays for two-thirds of all upfront drug R&D costs, with around a third of new medicines originating in public research institutions. On top of this, many medicines developed by pharmaceutical companies are often built upon a large body of scientific work undertaken and paid for by the tax payer.”

The report also makes it clear that that “even when the UK Government has funded a substantial proportion of the research and development” for innovative medicines, “there is no guarantee of an equitable public return on this investment.” It is also the case there is no promise that patients in the UK and further afield will be able to access the medicine at an affordable price.

Intellectual property rights ensure that large pharmaceutical companies have time-limited monopolies and are able to generate huge private profits – charging “high prices for products with relatively low production costs.”

These companies often claim that they need a commercial incentive to undertake further research and development, but they “consistently spend more on sales and marketing.” The reality is that their priority is shareholder dividends and that is plain wrong.

Global Justice Now is right to point out that the high prices of new medicines are unsustainable for an already under-funded NHS, while many patients in poor countries around the World are denied access to new pills and treatments because of the cost.

It is good that Global Justice Now has joined forces with Missing Medicines – a coalition of UK organisations, which want conditions on all public health research to make sure the medicines developed are affordable and accessible here in the UK and across the World. Please support this campaign.

[This is my article in today’s Cornish Guardian newspaper].