Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant, is in hot water after CEO Marijn Dekkers told a Financial Times conference that the company designed medicines \u201cfor western patients who can afford it\u201d not for the \u201cIndian market.\u201d The company has been critical of the Indian governments efforts to make cheap generic drugs available locally.<\/p>\n
(A video of Dekkers’ remarks can be seen here, go to 18:30<\/a>)<\/p>\n Bayer has been deeply critical of the March 2012 decision by the Indian Supreme Court to allow Natco Pharma, an Indian company, to sell sorafenib tosylate, a cancer drug for under $200 a month. The German company sells Nexavar, a branded version of the same drug, for over $8,000 a month<\/a>, marked up ostensibly to cover costs for drug development. (India\u2019s average per capita monthly income<\/a> is just under $100)<\/p>\n Dekkers’ statement was roundly condemned by activists. \u201cDrug companies claim to care about global health needs, but their track record says otherwise<\/a>,\u201d said Dr Manica Balasegaram, executive director of the access campaign of M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (Doctors Without Borders). \u201cPharmaceutical companies are singularly focused on profit and so aggressively push for patents and high drug prices.\u201d<\/p>\n In the U.S. companies are issued 20 year patents, after which the drug becomes available for anyone to make. India long refused to recognize international patents on essential drugs in order to keep prices affordable, but changed its laws to accept patents, as part of an agreement to join the World Trade Organization in 2005.<\/p>\n However the Indian government has reserved the right, under WTO rules, to create compulsory licenses for drugs for public health reasons, that only provide the patent holder with nominal royalty payments. The sorafenib license was the first to be issued under the rules. Since then India\u2019s health ministry has recommended issuing licenses for three other drugs<\/a> – Trastuzumab, Lxabepilone and Dasatinib \u2013 that were developed and marketed by Roche and Bristol-Myers Squibb.<\/p>\n Other drugs that are under consideration for compulsory licensing<\/a>, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, include two diabetes drugs, Merck\u2019s sitagliptin medication, Januvia, and Bristol-Myers\u2019 saxagliptin drug called Onglyza; Merck\u2019s HIV drug raltegravir, sold under the brand name Isentress; and Bristol-Myers\u2019 arthritis drug abatacept, sold as Orencia.<\/p>\n Ironically, Dekker\u2019s comments served to prove an argument made by public health activists for many years. \u201cAt a time when Pharma\u2019s reputation is suffering, Dekkers\u2019 comment does not help matters,\u201d wrote John La Mattina, former president of Pfizer,s global research and development. \u201cRather, it reinforces the notion that Big Pharma is only interested in profits<\/a> and those in need are out of luck when it comes to life saving medicines.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America\u2019s claims that the high costs of branded drugs are justified by the cost of developing new drugs, which industry says average $800 million per drug. But Kalyani Menon-Sen, the coordinator of the Campaign for Affordable Trastuzumab, says that the companies actually make \u201cseveral thousand\u201d times the cost of their original research<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn’t have to be this way,\u201d adds Balasegaram. \u201cMedical innovation can be incentivized differently, and research paid for in ways that deliver drugs but without high prices that exclude millions of people from access.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically many major pharmaceutical companies take advantage of cheap labor in India to help them boost their profits. \u201cIndia took (China\u2019s) place as the world\u2019s pharmacy, and in recent decades has been the largest provider of cheap, lifesaving medicines in poor countries across the globe<\/a>,\u201d write Vikas Bajaj and Andrew Pollack in the New York Times. Indeed Doctors Without Borders estimates that 80 percent of the generic AIDS drugs that it distributes to 170,000 patients in Africa are made in India.<\/p>\n