Loyola
Marymount University (1)
Team
Members: Travis
Higgins-Lew, Karli Schneider, Brian Williams, Alexandria Lynberg
Advisor: Thomas White
Topic/Audience: Intellectual Property in
the Pharmaceutical Industry: A look into AIDS drugs
Executive
Summary
Today,
AIDS represents perhaps our largest global health crisis.
Currently, thirty-nine million people worldwide are living
with HIV/AIDS. Infection rates continue to grow worldwide
and six million people in developing countries will die in
the next two years if they do not receive AIDS treatment.
Current patent laws provide protection for pharmaceutical
companies to maintain high drug prices and discourage generic
drugs from entering into the market. Because of this protection,
drug prices have skyrocketed leaving AIDS victims unable to
pay for the medication needed to survive and to fight the
disease. We intend to show that the legal and financial arguments
currently being made by pharmaceutical companies do not justify
their reasoning for providing drugs at unaffordable prices,
while the ethical dimension of this issue continues to go
unexamined. During a worldwide epidemic, Bristol-Myers Squibb,
as a leading pharmaceutical company in the health care industry
with a mission “to extend and enhance human life,”
has the responsibility of making sure that people have access
to the drugs they need. As members of the most powerful and
wealthiest industry in the nation, you are not only connected
to this terrible crisis, but also have the resources needed,
as well as a fundamental obligation to help people whose lives
depend on receiving the drugs you create.
As a result, we recommend: 1. Adopt a pricing structure based
on the economic resources of the countries infected with AIDS
2. Allow generic forms of your AIDS drugs to enter into the
market through voluntary licensing. 3. Set up and expand contribution
to AIDS educational awareness programs.
Living -- and living up to -- the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pledge
is crucial to your mission to extend and enhance human life,
and is key to your future success. You have the ability to
truly make a difference in the lives of millions. We are asking
you as one of the most profitable pharmaceutical companies
to adopt our proposed solutions and to set an example, an
example for not only the pharmaceutical industry, but for
the world to follow.
