Used car salesmen - checked sport jacket, smarmy smile, federal ID

Updated Again, a little gem found via Information Clearinghouse. As reported in the British Medical Journal for July 24,

The United States has come under fire for pressuring developing countries to give up their right to produce cheap, generic anti-AIDS medicines in return for bilateral trade agreements that strengthen protection of costlier, brand name drugs.

Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz joined advocacy groups Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières this month in criticising Washington for bowing to industry pressure by pursuing a policy the groups say could prevent millions of AIDS patients in poor countries from getting the lifesaving antiretroviral drugs and treatment they need. ...

Writing in the New York Times on 10 July, Professor Stiglitz said President George W Bush's policy was "puzzling and hypocritical" because only last year he had pledged $15bn (£8bn; 12bn euros) to help countries in Africa and the Caribbean affected by AIDS. "While he talks about a global campaign against AIDS and has offered substantial sums to back it up, what he is giving with one hand is being taken away with the other," Professor Stiglitz wrote.

Access to lifesaving medicines has been a sticking point in trade agreements between the United States and countries such as Brazil, which also has a generic drugs industry and is the only developing country with free universal AIDS treatment.

Joseph Stiglitz, you may recall, is the former chief economist of the World Bank who was ousted in 1999, apparently at the insistence of then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, because Stiglitz had been giving voice to his increasing disillusionment over the effects of the policies and practices of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He founded and now heads the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, which "helps developing and transition countries explore policy alternatives, and enables wide civic participation in economic policymaking."

Footnote: The BMJ article notes the claims of pharmaceutical companies that

patent protection (which keeps prices of medicines high for a number of years) is vital to finance research and develop new medicines.

That claim is actually pure bunk. This past December, I had a debate on a political mailing list about just this topic, with my unlearned opponent claiming that

I know you like to throw around words like “Big Drug Companies” to scare people into thinking they are evil, but if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have things like, oh, Penicillin, and we wouldn’t have hope for any other pharmaceutical advances.

Penicillin, of course, as is well known, was accidentally discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1929. It was researched at Oxford University until World War II forced moving the work to the US, where, with a significant assist from the US Army, ways were developed for large-scale production. It was only then, in 1941, that private industry became a significant player and even then only because the government gave them grants to cover the cost of the equipment required.

The real issue, however, is the "no hope" business. But as even he was forced to admit - by his own figures, in fact - corporate financing of drug research amounts to a little over one-half of such funding, with most of the rest coming from government. (Universities and foundations account for the rest.) More importantly, most public monies are devoted to basic research while a large portion of corporate research is on "copycat" drugs, minor variations (but sufficient to be patentable) of existing treatments undertaken with an eye on market share rather than health care. So I pointed out a few things, these among them:

- Out of the 77 drugs approved by the FDA for cancer treatment as of 1/1/96, 50, or nearly 2/3, were the product of the Investigational New Drug program sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

- "The Globe looked at 50 top-selling drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration over the past five years: 35 new drugs, which are bestsellers among those the FDA deemed most important or most unique, and 15 'orphan' drugs targeting rare diseases. Thirty-three of the 35 new drugs and 12 of the 15 orphans received money from the National Institutes of Health or the FDA to help in discovery, development, or testing." - "Private Profits from Public Funds," Boston Globe, April 5, 1998.

The headline of that Globe story tells it all about the real state of corporate medical "research" and the "necessity" of patent protection.

Footnote to the footnote: Speaking of that, the New York Times for July 24 described how

[t]he Bush administration has been going to court to block lawsuits by consumers who say they have been injured by prescription drugs and medical devices.

The administration contends that consumers cannot recover damages for such injuries if the products have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. ...

Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat of New York, said the administration had "taken the F.D.A. in a radical new direction, seeking to protect drug companies instead of the public." Mr. Hinchey recently persuaded the House to cut $500,000 from the budget of the agency's chief counsel as a penalty for its aggressive opposition to consumer lawsuits.

Well, props to Rep. Hinchey. The "radical new direction" lies in the fact that in 1997, the government held that

F.D.A. approval of a medical device set the minimum standard, and that states could provide "additional protection to consumers." Now the Bush administration argues that the agency's approval of a device "sets a ceiling as well as a floor."

Isn't is just amazing how the very same people who so strenuously argue for "states' rights" and "decentralization" and "local control" can in the next breath brazenly wheel around and argue just as vigorously for federal pre-emption? And isn't it just the most astonishing coincidence that whichever way they turn it just happens to be in the direction more beneficial to corporate America?

It's worthy of Ripley's I tell you.

Footnote to the footnote to the footnote: The Times also reported that

[t]he administration said its position, holding that individual consumers have no right to sue, actually benefited consumers.

The threat of lawsuits, it said, "can harm the public health" by encouraging manufacturers to withdraw products from the market or to issue new warnings that overemphasize the risks and lead to "underutilization of beneficial treatments."

Next week, the White House will be introducing legislation banning criticism of the government, arguing that it would actually benefit citizens.

Criticism, it said, "can harm the public debate" by discouraging politicians from making statements people might object to and from lobbying on behalf of the haves, leading to "underutilization of beneficial campaign contributions."

Updated to note that Fiat Lux has an example of how the government's logic about the FDA could be extended that makes the point well.