Brazil Breaks Patent to Make AIDS Drug

Andy Tai writes: "In this CNN story, Brazil decides to break a patent over an AIDS drug for public benefits. Brazil will produce the drug domestically without agreements with patent holder, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche. Brazil's efforts to fight AIDS have been praised internationally, and it successfully prevented the US Government from bringing complaints in the WTO on behalf of the drugs industry. This may set an important example that public needs justify the disregard of patent protection." There's another article in the Boston Globe about the decision.

Comments

nice try, but...

[tewwetruggur]

...you have unfortunately replied to someone who works in the pharmaceutical industry.

I do wish people would stop it with the "how are they going to fund research?" crap. If you look at the big picture of drug research, and where the costs really are, you would see that a lot of it is inflated numbers caused by "economic factors" and other such nonsense. That is how a lot of universities are able to continue to do excellent pharma research. The companies are hindered for less noble reasons than academia.