Projects
Innova-P2
project name: Pharma-Innovation - Patent-2
initiating country: The European Union
Framework Programme: FP7 programme area: Capacities contract type: CP-FP – Collaborative Focused Research Project
contract/proposal/call number: 217665
status: active
start date: June 2008 duration: 36 months projected finish date: June 2011
Keywords
Fields of Research:
Intellectual Property Law
keywords: intellectual property; pharmaceutical; IPR
Project Budget
total budget: € 930,130
Participants
Note that the follow people may not represent the full extent of the consortium. FEAST has tried to identify the Australian participants, and their collaborators (or coordinator), within the project. Also note that Australian participation may not necessarily be on a formal level. Further details about the partners in this project can be found at the website listed below.
| name | organisation | state or country |
|---|---|---|
| Dr Miltos Ladikas | UCLAN | United Kingdom |
| Prof Peter Singer | The University of Melbourne | VIC, Australia |
Further information
WWW: www.uclan.ac.uk/health/research/rae2008/ethical_issues_in_human_health/ongoing_projects/innovap2.php
summary:
The aims of the project are:
Advance knowledge and ethical insight into reform plans for the current Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) system.
Finalise the existing plan to amend the current IPR system in the area of pharmaceutical innovation.
Provide a reality check and obtain support for the new system from the world’s two most powerful developing/emerging country actors (India and China).
Promote urgent policy developments on IPR by forging a consensus for the new system and providing a policy action plan.
Project Summary
One-third of all human deaths (18 million every year) are from diseases that could have been prevented, cured or treated. Hundreds of millions more people suffer from these diseases, while the lives of their families are shattered by severe illness and premature deaths. Most of these cases occur among poor people in poor countries, often due to diseases that have been almost eliminated in the developed world, creating a disease burden which perpetuates their poverty.
But not only do 200 million people not have access to existing essential medicines which could alleviate their conditions. Currently, “neglected diseases”, which account for 90% of the global disease burden, receive only 10% of all medical research funds worldwide. Of the 1556 new drugs approved between 1975 and 2004, only 18 were for tropical diseases which affect millions of people.
Under the global TRIPs agreement, inventors of new drugs can obtain a 20-year global monopoly, but this regime prices most new drugs beyond the reach of the global poor. The existing system offers few incentives for the pharmaceutical development of medicines to address the real global disease burden, when more profit can be made from me-too drugs for hair loss.
Thomas Pogge recently co-authored a book on the Health Impact Fund – a proposal to create an alternative system funded by international governments, where pharmaceutical innovators could choose to register new products and then make these available at cost in order to receive a 10 year reward based on the assessment of the drug’s impact on the global disease burden. Innova-P2 is specifically designed to work along these lines and finalise the suggested IPR reform plan.
The inaugural meeting of the project took place in Oslo, 26-27 August 2008, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo.
Partners in the project are:
Prof Thomas Pogge, Dr Miltos Ladikas, Julie Cook Lucas, (Project Co-ordinators) Centre for Professional Ethics, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
Prof Arjun Sengupta, Dr Nagesh Kumar, Dr Sachin Chaturvedi, Research and Information System for Developing Countries, New Delhi, India
Prof Zhiqian Gao, Dr Lifeng Guo, Dr Zhe Li, Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development, Ministry of Science and Technology, Beijing, China
Prof Peter Singer, Prof Doris Schroeder, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics,University of Melbourne, Australia
Dr Veronique Fournier, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Centre d’éthique clinique at Hôpital Cochin, Paris
Prof Fatima Alvarez Castillo, Department of Social Sciences, University of the Philippines Manila
Professor Lynn Frewer, Dr David Coles, Wageningen University, the Netherlands
Source: University of Central Lancashire
