The world’s health workers, including researchers and scientists developing the next generation of life-saving medicines, have much to celebrate. In all parts of the world, life expectancy for low-, middle-, and high-income countries continues to increase unabated. The nearly 100 million babies born in 2019 will live longer, healthier, and wealthier lives than their parents.
In the not-so-distant future, we could see the end of TB, eradication of polio, 100 percent detection and treatment for all HIV/AIDS cases, and not only will malaria be eradicated from 21 target countries, but a vaccine may be invented. These are at the core of the World Health Organization’s efforts to respond to health emergencies while coordinating preparedness and policy objectives with national governments.
However, the WHO, like all bureaucratic agencies, is subject to capture by special interests. In fact, 80 percent of the WHO’s massive $4.7 billion operating budget in the 2016-2017 period came from voluntary contributions. This opens the door for the organization to take on noncore work.
For instance, WHO has been extending health policy making to noncore areas. For instance, at this week’s executive board meeting, a Global Strategy Plan for Climate Change is set to be adopted. The draft document envisions the WHO playing a role advocating for all things green, including “reconfiguration of taxes to reflect all the consequences of policies and reduce inequalities.”
The WHO has also made headlines recently by stepping into the entertainment sector and classifying “gaming disorder” as an addiction, a decision few health systems support. The WHO also adopted a classification system for Traditional Chinese Medicine, and was met with sharp criticism for creating a false equivalency that jeopardized endangered species.
However, the most egregious encroachment of the WHO has been the increasing advocacy for compulsory licenses through “TRIPS flexibilities” as a policy option for nearly every health challenge. These flexibilities refer to the legal loophole that allows any country to take off-patent anything for any government-pursued public policy goal.
The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement, and other binding trade agreements like it signed by more than 100 countries, was made possible only due to careful language that keeps intact state sovereignty. The document was a monumental breakthrough, thanks to the Ronald Reagan administration, by requiring all countries to protect and enforce copyrights, patents, and trademarks.
Before TRIPS, even countries like Japan and France had trouble protecting intellectual property. Since TRIPS there has been an explosion of trade in high-tech goods as well as research and investment across the world. The value of intangible goods now outweighs tangibles in the U.S. and Europe where approximately 105 million jobs and 40 percent of their gross domestic product depends on IP-intensive sectors.
Infringing on patent rights, as the WHO has been encouraging, is particularly damaging because of how it threatens the delicate innovation ecosystem responsible for the next generation of medicines such as the malaria and Ebola vaccines in development. Currently, new medicines require on average 12 years of research, $2.5 billion in R&D costs, and only less than 10 percent make it through trials to market.
If patents for new medicines will simply be ripped from drug manufacturers’ hands, they may simply devote more resources to marketing, or worse, decide to keep the most vital portions of their breakthroughs as trade secrets. There will be zero opportunities for knowledge spillovers, and trade secrets never expire.
There is one large reason why most patents for medical technology, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology in the last 10 years have been filed in North America and Europe. The two regions score highest in protecting patent rights according to the International Property Rights Index. The data clearly articulate, if other countries improve rule of law and keep the long hand of the government away from private property, the proper networks between universities and industries necessary for innovation will naturally occur.
The WHO executive board is lauded for their expertise. Its 34 members are elected for three-year terms and are usually ministers or secretaries in charge of their nation’s health agency. Ask any one of them how to identify Ebola or prepare a coordinated response to a new pandemic, I’m sure they’ll know what to do.
Combat climate change by imposing a new tax system? Research and analyze how various chemical compounds relate to cancer? Or discover novel medical advances? These things are beyond the expertise of WHO’s executive board leadership. Not only will it continue to fail in these areas, but vital progress on its core tasks, that promise to save millions of lives, will suffer.
Philip Thompson is a policy analyst for intellectual property and international trade with the Property Rights Alliance, an affiliate of Americans for Tax Reform.
