Nothing highlights the inhumanity of the global economic system better than drug patents.

Because of drug patents, numerous life-saving drugs for treating Aids, cancer, heart disease, etc, are priced at anything between five times to 20 times their production cost, putting them out of reach of millions of people across the globe whose lives could be saved if they had access to these drugs.

During the last decade, around half a million Thais died of Aids. The vast majority did not have access to antiretroviral drugs that could have kept them healthy for many more years. This was because such drugs were priced out of their reach due to the global drug patent system (even though most of them were not actually patented in Thailand).

Today, many of these drugs are manufactured cheaply by the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation and distributed free of charge on all health programmes. As a result, the annual Aids deaths in Thailand have dropped by over 80%.

One day in 1997, when I was an Aids worker, I visited a young man in the Din Daeng area of Bangkok who was dying from a fungal infection in the lining of his brain (cryptococcal meningitis). Like many other Thais who died from this opportunistic infection associated with Aids, his very painful death might have been prevented if his family could have afforded to give him a lifetime course of Fluconazole, costing around 250 baht per day.

At that time Fluconazole was not actually patented in Thailand, but the original product was protected from competition for two years under a so-called "safety monitoring programme" for new drugs that the United states had imposed on Thailand.

A few months later, after Thai manufacturers were allowed to compete with the original product, the cost of the daily pill dropped to less than 10 baht.

Of course, the multi-national drug companies who make huge profits from their patented drugs will argue that drug patents are needed to support the costs of research into new life-saving drugs for the global population.

Is this assertion convincing?

The fact is that a large proportion of the most important global research and development of new drugs is not actually funded by drug companies, but by taxpayers. An internal study in 2000 by the US government's National Institute of Health (NIH) showed that 55% of the research that led to the discovery and development of the five top-selling drugs in 1995 was paid for by US government funding, while 30% was funded by foreign academic institutions.

An earlier study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found that public funding played a role in the development of 67% of the 21 most important drugs introduced between 1965-1992.

Other studies have shown that drug companies spend only around 2% of their research and development funds to develop treatments for diseases prevalent in the developing world that affect 90% of the global population.

This, of course, is because of the limited marketing prospects for such drugs.

Would it not be much better for global health if drug patents were eliminated (at least for all important and life-saving drugs)?

Funding for research and development of new drugs could be provided by a global fund to which every country would contribute according to its economic strength.

Then all knowledge on new drugs would belong in the public domain, and free competition among manufacturers would ensure the lowest prices for these drugs.

A number of international organisations and academics concerned about global access to life-saving drugs have proposed various alternative means to fund drug research so that drug patents can be eliminated.

In order to alleviate the negative effects resulting from intellectual property rights, Article 31 of the global agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) specifically allows governments to override patents in emergency situations or for non-commercial public use of patented products.

This is exactly what the Thai Ministry of Public Health did between November 2006 and February 2008, so as to ensure that seven expensive, patented drugs needed to treat Aids, heart disease and cancer could be made available to patients under Thailand's universal health and social insurance programmes.

The actions taken by former health minister Dr Mongkol Na Songkhla were perfectly legitimate and the US government has never disputed this. Yet there has been an outcry from international drug companies and their lobbyists, some of whom have accused Thailand of property theft.

In retaliation for the Thai government's use of one of their patented products, Abbott Laboratories of Chicago made a disgraceful and immoral retaliation by withdrawing registration of seven important drugs in Thailand, thus taking Thai patients as their hostage.

Now Chaiya Sasomsab, Dr Mongkol's newly appointed successor, has caused an outcry among health activists and patient networks by announcing a review of Dr Mongkol's recent government-use orders covering four cancer drugs.

Where's that smell coming from?

Jon Ungphakorn is a former elected senator for Bangkok and a Thai NGO activist. Comments are welcome at: [email protected]