[Gllug] An "open source" inspiration .."Medical breakthrough could change global politics...]

Thu Jan 18 01:06:36 UTC 2007

This, apart from being worthwhile to know for people with an ethical
stance that applauds the politics and culture of open/free software, and
A Good Thing in its own right, had me thinking ... is there any way this
sort of game could be played to break patent (or copyright?) upon
software if it should ever be implemented this side of the pond.

Read and enjoy the idea of bigpharmacorprats getting it up the arse from
the people they kill in millions by denying easily supplied medical
attention...

Subject: Medical breakthrough could change global politics...
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:10:20 -0800

Oh! revenge oh sweet revenge...at last!!!

             Medical Breakthrough Could Change Global Politics 
                              By Chris Floyd 
                    t r u t h o u t | UK Correspondent 

                          Tuesday 16 January 2007 

                        I. The Biochemistry of Hope 

     More war in Iraq. A new front in Somalia. Ships, troops and planes
  lurking on the borders of Iran. Every day seems to deepen the shadow
   over the dark valley of our times. Driven by a reckless regime in
 Washington and the increasingly strident reaction it provokes, and by
growing financial and social inequities stranding billions of people in
poverty and despair, the geopolitical scene appears locked in a cycle of
              conflict and chaos that nothing can break. 

      But a quiet announcement at London's Hammersmith Hospital at the
 turning of the new year heralded a breakthrough that has the potential
 to be one of the most transformative developments ever seen in global
  affairs: a positive change on a par with - or even surpassing - the
  world-altering malignancies of war, greed and strife. But this boon
    could be strangled in its cradle by the vast corporate interests
     threatened by its radical new approach to both health care and
                               business. 

        The approach is called "ethical pharmaceuticals," and it was
unveiled on January 2 by Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases
    at Imperial College, and Steve Brocchini of the London School of
 Pharmacy, the Guardian reports. Their team of scientists in India and
 the UK, financed by the prestigious Wellcome with technical assistance
  from the UK government, have developed a method of making small but
   significant changes to the molecular structure of existing drugs,
thereby transforming them into new products, circumventing the long-term
patents used by the corporate giants of Big Pharma to keep prices - and
 profits - high. This will give the world's poorest and most vulnerable
 people access to life-saving medicines - now priced out of reach - for
                             mere pennies. 

     But the breakthrough is not merely biochemical. Shaunak's team is
proposing a new model for the pharmaceutical business. The patent of the
  transformed drug they have developed is held by non-profit Imperial
 University. And because their methods are hundreds of millions dollars
  cheaper than the mammoth development costs of the big pharmaceutical
  companies - whose spending on marketing and advertising often dwarfs
 their funding of scientific research - Shaunak and his colleagues can
 market their vital medicines for infectious diseases at near-giveaway
  levels, yet still stay in business. How so? By foregoing the profit
              motive as the ultimate value of their work. 

        "People in academic medicine have a choice," Shaunak told an
 Imperial College journal. "They can use their ideas and creativity to
 make large sums of money for small numbers of people, or they can look
  outwards to the global community and make affordable treatments for
                           common diseases." 

    The first drug developed by the team is a new version of interferon,
the main treatment for Hepatitis C, a debilitating disease that afflicts
    200 million people worldwide. Yet only 30 million can afford the
  medicine. That leaves the rest to face the chronic liver disease and
   premature death that the illness inflicts. The cost of Hepatitis C
 treatment in the UK is approximately $13,000 per patient per year, New
Scientist reports. Nor can a cheaper version of the existing interferon
be made, because Big Pharma players Hoffman-La Roche and Schering Plough
hold patents not only on the drug but also on the standard way of adding
       the special molecules needed to enhance its performance. 

    So Shaunak and Brocchini invented a new way attaching the molecules
    - from the inside, not the outside - that went around the patent
restrictions and produced a medicine that "appears to be as effective as
   the existing product," according to Nature, the leading scientific
    journal. Their novel methods could also be adapted to extend the
effectiveness of "drugs for other conditions such as HIV," at a fraction
 of current costs, Shaunak told New Scientist. Big Pharma says it costs
an average of $800 million to create a new drug; but without the need to
    produce ever-expanding profits for shareholders or use glitzy ad
campaigns to push their pills - or lay out the vast political patronage
  that Big Pharma dispenses each year to keep its favored politicians
 sweet - Shaunak says his team can now develop essential medicines for
                   only a few million dollars each. 

            In fact, while their Hepatitis C medicine undergoes
 government-funded clinical trials in India, Shaunak and Brocchini have
been asked by Médecins Sans Frontières to work on treatments for another
ailment: Leishmaniasis, a parasitical disease also known as black fever.
     It "occurs in the poorer parts of the world: India, around the
 Mediterranean, South America, Sudan," Shaunak told Spero News. "Again,
 there is a treatment that cures the disease but in places like Bihar,
 India, the cost of the drug is 80 percent of a person's annual income.
  What we are going to do is make a version of the drug which will be
stable in hot climates and which will cost about 10 percent of the price
                      of the existing medicine." 

        The potential benefits and geopolitical implications of this
     approach are almost limitless. Imagine a world where the most
downtrodden can be rescued from the ravages of chronic disease that now
beset them, generation after generation. A world where they don't droop
and languish, where their energies are not consumed and exhausted in the
struggle for survival. A world where their children are born to healthy
  mothers, with all the proven advantages for future development, both
  physically and mentally, that such a birth provides. Imagine a world
  where the preventable deaths and epidemics that break down societal
bonds, devastate communities, cripple local economies, destroy families
 and make any kind of political action almost impossible are a thing of
   the past. Whole new polities, new movements, new philosophies, new
  centers of power would be created as the majority of humanity - the
untold multitudes who simply "don't matter" now, who live and die on the
ragged margins, in the mega-slums and shattered villages, the industrial
  wastelands and war-scarred regions - are finally liberated from the
  tyranny of chronic disease. Imagine the kind of politics that could
   emerge from millions of long-forgotten people suddenly given more
strength, more longevity, more time and energy to seek political change
 and redress of grievances rather than merely fighting to stay alive. 

      It would be the political, social and cultural equivalent of the
discovery of the "New World," which transformed global affairs forever.
   Only this time, the "natives" would be healed and empowered by the
encounter, not decimated and marginalized by disease and dispossession. 

      We're not speaking here of "miracle cures" for all ailments, but
  simply of access to the kind of basic health care that is considered
    normal in the developed world. Of course, millions in these more
privileged countries also suffer needless debilitation from the firewall
 of profit and price that surrounds so many medical advances. And here
too, "ethical pharmaceuticals" could also have a large political effect.
 Once the drugs pass medical trials in India and elsewhere, they can be
 sold in many nations in the developed world. Britain's National Health
    Service, for example, would be able to use the Shaunak-Brocchini
 treatment for Hepatitis C, saving tens of millions of dollars for the
  public health service every year: money that could then be used for
treating other diseases, for preventive care, for improving facilities -
          a virtuous circle rippling outward through society. 

                        II. Pushbacks and Politics 

     Of course, the American people would doubtless be "protected" from
such radical virtue by its benevolent government, which even now shields
   them from the menace of "unsafe" low-cost prescription drugs from
    Canada. (For as we all know, al Qaeda has thoroughly infiltrated
  Canada's commie-style health care system and is hoping to flood the
  Homeland with polonium-laced heart pills and exploding suppositories
     from Montreal and Saskatoon.) A strong bipartisan consensus in
Washington has long fought off the importation of dubious nostrums from
devilish foreigners. And although this tender concern for the wellbeing
 of the American people has never quite extended to actually providing
  them with guaranteed health care, it has - no doubt coincidentally -
done wonders for the coffers of the major pharmaceutical companies, who
have reciprocated by showering their largesse on these dedicated public
                              officials. 

    The power of this relationship has just been demonstrated once again
      on Capitol Hill, as the Washington Post noted on Friday. The
  newly-empowered Democratic majority in Congress has scaled back its
 once-bold plans to overhaul George W. Bush's disastrous Medicare drug
 program, which bollixed the medical care of millions of Americans but
 has proven to be a bonanza for Big Pharma. (As well it should, seeing
 how pharmaceutical lobbyists wrote most of the bill.) Now, instead of
 their original plan to create a federal prescription-drug program that
would genuinely benefit the majority of the populace, the Democrats are
offering an anemic measure that would require the government to use its
buying power to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare patients. Even
 this would be an improvement over the current boondoggle, but it is of
course foredoomed to failure: Bush has already promised to veto it, and
   the Democrats are unlikely to muster enough votes to override his
                              rejection. 

      That's because, as the Post reports, "drug firms and their trade
groups have been transforming their Washington operations by hiring top
     Democratic lobbyists to gain access to new committee chairmen,
   bolstering Democratic political donations and spending millions on
  public relations campaigns to overcome an image, indicated in recent
surveys, that the industry puts profits ahead of patients." (More money
    that could have been spent on developing cheaper cures for, say,
                    Hepatitis C or Leishmaniasis.) 

    In fact, Big Pharma has laid out more loot for American politicians
    "than any other industry between 1998 and 2005 - more than $900
       million," the Post reports. For that amount of money, the
   Shaunak-Brocchini method could have produced some 90 new low-cost
      treatments for deadly infectious diseases around the world. 

      With this kind of political muscle behind it, Big Pharma will be
     well-placed to launch its inevitable push-back against ethical
 pharmaceuticals. They are already limbering up the legal artillery for
 possible patent infringement suits against the Shaunak team - although
 the latter, through Imperial College, has also procured some big legal
 guns to protect the process, including top lawyers who have worked for
    Big Pharma itself, the Guardian reports. With press releases and
   pro-industry articles from friendly journalists in conservative UK
papers, the corporations are also mounting a PR campaign against the new
  drug development method, and defending their huge profit margins as
     essential for continuing the industry's service to humanity. 

    And it's true that the drugs developed by major pharmaceutical firms
 have been of tremendous service to humanity over the years. Of course,
 most of the time these benefits have gone to that portion of humanity
  that can afford to pay for them, but not always. In the case of some
 high-profile diseases, like AIDS, the industry has - often belatedly,
  sometimes reluctantly and sometimes with genuine altruism - provided
             some treatments at low cost, or even no cost. 

     The irony is that Shaunak - who with his colleagues is now in the
cross-hairs of Big Pharma - cheerfully acknowledges the industry's good
 works, and doesn't see his own researches as a threat. As he noted to
 Spero News, his team is focused on providing medicines for people who
 are getting no treatment at all. The drug companies are not making any
 money from these sufferers; therefore they won't lose money if someone
   else provides help for them. "These patients are simply getting no
treatment because the medicines are so expensive," he said. "As somebody
working within a university, I have a mission statement [to] try to make
drugs available for patients who currently have no treatment at all. So
 in many ways our approach is complementary and not competitive to the
                    big pharmaceutical approaches." 

      Complementary in many ways, yes, but not in all; for there's no
 doubt that as ethical pharmaceuticals seep from the desolate areas of
 the earth where Big Pharma can mine no medical gold into the developed
nations, it will erode the industry's towering profit margins. The drug
companies will have to learn to live within somewhat more modest means -
perhaps shaving a bit from the multimillion-dollar compensation packages
of its executives - or else shell out even more around the world for the
kind of political protection it now buys in Washington. Either way, even
  here, in this very modest beginning, the new political and financial
  power of the world's forgotten multitudes will begin to make itself
                                 felt. 

          Of course it may well be that the development of ethical
 pharmaceuticals, like most human endeavors, will not achieve its full
 potential. It may well be that powerful forces will combine to kill or
 cripple it. But for now at least, it stands as a reminder that in the
 course of human events, the ultimate ends are always unknown. Cycles,
systems, patterns of behavior and immense structures of power that seem
 so fixed and immutable today will be swept away tomorrow, in ways that
we cannot begin to fathom. In dark days that seem locked in a glide-path
   to disaster, these glimmers of possibility can perhaps offer some
                           measure of hope. 

________________________________________________________________________
    Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His weekly political column,
 "Global Eye," ran in the Moscow Times from 1996 to 2006. His work has
appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The
Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science
 Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Bergen Record and many others. His story on
Pentagon plans to foment terrorism won a Project Censored award in 2003.
He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the
 Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the "Empire Burlesque"
                            political blog. 

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