Attempts to Limit Intellectual Property Rights in India Could Harm Access to Generic Drugs

Simon Reid-Henry, a lecturer in the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London and a senior fellow at the Peace Research Institute, and Hans Lofgren, an associate professor in politics at Deakin University in Melbourne, write in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog" about "a triple-pronged attack on [India's] generic drug manufacturers by the west." They discuss the European Union-India free trade agreement, currently being negotiated, an Indian supreme court case between Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis and the Indian government; and an "attempt by German pharmaceutical company Bayer to revoke the recent granting of a compulsory license for an Indian firm, Natco Pharma." If the west is successful in any of these attempts, it "could delay the introduction of cheaper medicines in India and elsewhere at a time when the global financial crisis has already put the squeeze on life-saving medicines across the world," they write (7/26).