Posted:05/02/07

Big Pharma panel talk on campus
Promoting awareness and advocacy

Colin Vallance | photo editor
cvallance@smcvt.edu

In an event that finished up the Global Health Challenge Awareness and Advocacy talks held at St. Michael’s College on April 26, a panel was held on “The Pharmaceutical Companies & Global Health.”

The three speakers on the panel were Jamie Love, director of CP Tech, a company that deals with intellectual property rights and health care; St. Michael’s Political Science Professor Patricia Siplon, author of “AIDS & the Policy Struggle in the U.S.” and “Drugs into Bodies: global AIDS Treatment Activist”; and Bill Haddad, founder and CEO of generic drug company, Biogenerics. Presiding over the panel as moderator was assistant professor of political science Dr. Michael Bosia.

Different approaches to the problem

Boasting a wide range of expertise on the topic, the panel members addressed issues relating to the role of transnational companies in promoting world health to the solutions needed to make high cost drugs available a generic low cost price. Haddad, who has been trotting the globe lobbying for generic drugs to be available to developing countries for the past four decades, addressed the issue of how the current infrastructure for producing drugs is not adequate.

“Clinton said it best, ‘We have the ability and we have the medicines to convert a certain death sentence into a chronic illness and we’re not using them,” Haddad said. He also spoke of the bureaucratic barriers that he faces, “with a new road block popping up around every corner,” he says.

Another point discussed by the panel involved re-thinking the way multinational drug companies’ research and develop these new drugs. Love, who is a expert on the Doha agreement, which declared that developing companies should be able to break patent regulations in order to produce their own affordable generic drugs, explained a progressive drug development model that takes into account both the drug companies as well as need-based patients.

“The prize system with a ‘z’ is better than the price system with a ‘c’,” he says.

“This is the new paradigm that people are talking about. Can you replace high prices with a system of prizes? In the new machine the price of drugs will be the same low price not only in the U.S but everywhere.”

This new model, according to Love, is meant to circumvent monopolies on life-saving inventions and reward companies for producing products for the public good through substantial monetary incentives.

St. Michael's perspective

Siplon also addressed the issue of structural inequities in terms of how drug companies promote themselves.

“Two problems with the role of pharmaceutical companies is in the way that they present themselves, on their Web sites they often put up statistics of the number of people under treatment but there is no comparison to the number of people in need,” Siplon says.

“The second problem is that they present the idea that charity is what is going to solve the problem. I think this is beyond wrong because this convinces developing countries governments that they don’t need the generic version of the drug because corporations do give aways.”

In her research from the past two years, Siplon has been investigating with her classes the number of people the companies claim are benefiting from the giveaways. She said they have been unable to find the names of these programs.

“Just for kicks, before I came to the panel I went on the Web site to find out what the numbers are currently. These claims are no longer being advertised,” Siplon says.

After the panel had finished, questions were opened up to the audience. President vanderHeyden raised the point of why the corporation's CEOs were being singled out as the sole villains.

“The reason for my question was that I was wondering that they always seem to apply that that pharmaceutical corporations are driven by the greed of their high ranking leaders,” vanderHeyden says.

“The corporations in large are not at fault, it is the unions, pension plans and the people that rely on these institutions. More than half of the population of the U.S. are invested in these companies and rely on dividends growing. We cannot just point the finger at just CEO’s with high salaries.”

Scholarly opposition

A final sentiment was expressed to abruptly end the discussion. Dr. Gerald Silverstein, a UVM professor who teaches "AIDS: Anatomy of a Pandemic" and "Infectious Diseases and Global Health" said that the panel did not fully present the problems surrounding global health.

“There are 22 developed nations, combined with a GWI of $35 trillion. Of the $35 trillion they give $100 billion to developmental association programs. Less than half of that goes to health care; that’s only $50 to give to the most need-based countries for health care,” Silverstein says.

“Pharmacutical companies are not the only guys that are perpetuating this cycle, the rest of the world has given less than one percent of its economy to developmental health,” he says.

vanderHeyden says he listened to what Dr. Silverstein had to say but believed he choose the wrong forum to voice his opinion. “The topic of the discussion was clear from its title, it was meant to create awareness of global health as well as to encourage advocacy. It was not a classroom setting where issues are balanced and all of the issues are discussed,” vanderHeyden says. Meg Rule, a senior economics major and political science minor, attended the event out of curiosity.

“I didn’t get a chance to go to any of the other speakers during the day but I was interested in the pharmaceutical discussion,” she says. “I didn’t have to go to any of them for class but the topic dealt with a lot of the issues we studied in Professor Siplon’s global AIDS class,” she says. “I am interested in the socio-economic side of things and the talk dealt with that.”