EDITORIAL - Cheaper by default

Thanks to the lapse of a patent and the alertness of a local pharmaceutical company, Filipinos with cholesterol problems can now buy their medicine at half the original price. An American multinational company’s patent on the drug simvastatin expired in 2002, and Filipino-owned United Laboratories jumped on the chance to produce its version, marketed at a much lower price as Vidastat. Prices of similar anti-cholesterol drugs have since gone down in the country.

This is good news for Filipinos suffering from high cholesterol; a price cut of about 50 percent is significant in a poor country. It’s bad news, however, for multinationals, which invest up to $500 million to develop a single drug and must wait a decade or more from the start of research to the approval of their product by drug regulatory bodies. The amount of time, effort, money and talent required to come up with a drug like Viagra makes the pharmaceutical giants frown on efforts to copy their products for distribution at cheaper prices in the Third World.

Some nations, however, feel they have no choice. The spread of AIDS in the poorest parts of Africa, for one, cannot be contained unless free or at least cheaper medication is made available to millions of people. Go-vernments are not waiting for the results of contentious talks in the World Trade Organization over cheaper medicine; drugs are being copied and distributed to AIDS and HIV sufferers in Africa.

This controversy was among the many issues left unresolved when the latest WTO round in Cancun, Mexico collapsed. In the Philippines, expensive drugs for life-threatening ailments such as AIDS aren’t the only problem. Prices of many branded drugs needed for common ailments such as diabetes and high blood are higher in this country than the rest of the region.

The ideal response to the problem is the development of a local pharmaceutical industry that can produce its own drugs for high cholesterol, HIV and even erectile dysfunction. Most companies in the developing world, however, can never hope to match the resources of the multinationals. As for talent, the Third World often loses its best minds to the rich countries and their companies.

A modus vivendi will have to be struck between the pharmaceutical giants and the developing world. In the meantime, ailing Filipinos can only hope for the lapse of a patent on another major life-saving drug.