Thomas Pogge Quotes
The cost of research, development and testing of a new drug is vastly greater than the cost of each dose produced. How should we pay for new medicines? Innovators should be rewarded according to the impact of their medicine, and people should contribute to these rewards according to their ability to pay.
Hollis, Aidan, and Thomas Pogge. The Health Impact Fund: Making New Medicines Accessible for All. Incentives for Global Health, 2008.
The major killer diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness are not contracted by Americans, and America is the only large country in the world where the Governments allow the drug companies to charge such high prices and make such huge profits. So any drug that Americans might pay for is a better potential profit generator than one that would be critical to the lives of millions where the governments to preserve lives would force the prices down or allow other companies to also make the drug. See {628648} for other factors affecting drug company priorities.
The Bayh-Dole Act (Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act) for the first time allowed universities which held patents obtained as a result of Government Funded Research to enter into agreements with corporations to develop new drugs from those patents. The theory was that, the number of new drugs brought to the market would substantially increase beyond only the hundred or so that appeared each year. Unfortunately, the legislation did not have the desired effect. By the first decade of the 21st century, the number of annual NEW drugs being brought to market was under 30 and in 2010 was only 10. The cost of going through required trials for FDA drug approval has reached hundreds of millions of dollars, and most organizations cannot afford to even make the attempt. Even if a drug is very promising, the drug companies will not invest the money unless there are enough people suffering from the malady the drug treats and the medicine has to be taken for a long time as with chronic conditions. The system works poorly for the society and the health system. Reforms are needed.
The “inflated prices” refers to the fact Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than any other country in the world as the American government allows the companies to charge any amounts while other governments either negotiate or mandate much lower prices.
Thomas Winfried Menko Pogge is a German philosopher and is the Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University. In addition to his Yale appointment, he is the Research Director of the Centre for the Study of the Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University and Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Central Lancashire's Centre for Professional Ethics. Pogge is also an editor for social and political philosophy for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
