Patents are in the patient's best interest

Forbes.com recently published an interesting article on the role of patents in drug development.  The article lays out the arguments for and against longer patent protection for medications, alleging that studies looking at efficacy, safety and new innovative uses are increasingly difficult to conduct because of the constantly ticking patent clock.

It's often mentioned, but frequently goes unrecognized, that only one of every 10,000 potential medicines investigated by America's research-based pharmaceutical companies makes it through the research and development pipeline and is approved for patient use by the FDA.  Winning approval, on average, takes 15 years of research and development and costs over $800 million dollars.  With drug development taking longer and costing more than ever, industry is left with less time to recoup its investment in R&D.  This begins a cycle that has the potential to negatively impact investment into novel healthcare innovations. 

There is no doubt that patent protection is of critical concern for an innovative industry.  In fact, without the necessary protection, decreased innovation will adversely affect treatment advances.  Think about it...if we can't afford to invest in novel medicines, then, eventually, we'll be living in a healthcare time capsule, with fewer new medicines--yet evolution will continue, delivering new diseases and viruses but no way for us to treat them. Further, as we all know, we have yet to find medicines to successfully treat all cancers and diseases like Alzheimer's, so expensive research is still critical.

It is in the public interest to ensure that scientists continue to bring more lifesaving drugs to market. To do this, pharmaceutical and biotech companies need the income stream afforded by patents on their existing products. It is therefore in the public interest that drug patents are respected and that we prevent a premature loss of patent rights which would decrease research on lifesaving drugs.

Just last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a new version of a patent reform bill.   GSK is pleased to be able to support the legislation, which improves the efficiency and effectiveness of our patent system. 

Most importantly, the bill allows the patent system to continue to encourage innovation and the investment of billions of dollars in research toward life-improving and life-saving medicines for patients. 

Now that's something we can all get behind.