Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
Hi, it’s Sarah again as Rhona is busily working on the other Lancet… I wanted to tell you a bit about a talk I heard yesterday about the work of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, a fantastic campaign which has been spearheaded by students in the United States. UAEM has two main pillars of activity.
- “to determine how universities can help ensure that biomedical end products, such as drugs, are made more accessible in poor countries and
- to increase the amount of research conducted on neglected diseases, or those diseases predominantly affecting people who are too poor to constitute a market attractive to private-sector R&D investment.”
Universities play a key role in global-health research, with a recent US Senate report finding that in the US 15 of the 21 drugs with the most therapeutic impact were derived from federally funded research at academic centres. They are also well-placed to influence the terms of drug licensing, since often their contribution is through fundamental research which occurs early on in the process of drug development.
As non-profit making institutions, the role of universities is often articulated as the creation and dissemination of knowledge in the public interest, a role seen by many as incompatible with the restrictions placed on access to the fruits of this process by current licensing regimes. In comparison to other actors in this arena such as the pharmaceutical companies, universities are also uniquely vulnerable to pressure from students and alumni.
Student activism around university-held intellectual property dates back to early 2001, and an anti-retroviral called stavudine. This compound, also known as d4t, was first found to be effective against HIV by scientists at Yale. The university issued an exclusive licence to Bristol Myers Squibb, in exchange for royalties, and stavudine became a cornerstone of anti-retroviral triple therapy. However, high prices kept it beyond the reach of the vast majority of AIDS patients in the developing world. In 2001 Yale University was approached by Medecins sans Frontieres to ask whether the university would consider issuing a voluntary licence to allow the import and use of generic stavudine in South Africa. The university initially denied the request, but following a highly effective pressure campaign from some well-informed and media savvy students, Yale and Bristol Myers agreed to issue an emergency licence which led to a thirty-fold decrease in the price of the drug in South Africa.
Since then, activists have campaigned for increased access to other drugs developed in part by university researchers. Among these is Zemplar, a life-saving kidney drug developed at the University of Wisconsin which was withdrawn from sale in Thailand by Abbott Pharmaceuticals in response to a decision by the Thai government to allow production of generic anti-retrovirals.
In addition to targeted actions related to specific drugs, UAEM is working to achieve systematic improvements in the way that university research benefits global health. A key step has been the drafting of the Philadelphia Consensus statement, which calls on universities to make the fruits of research more freely available to the world’s destitute sick through three major policy shifts which together could help save millions of lives:
1) Promoting equal access to research
2) Promoting research and development for neglected diseases.
3) Measuring research success according to impact on human welfare.
The statement has been signed by luminaries in science, medicine, public health and public policy, as well as over 2,500 scholars, students and clinicians. You can add your name here – consider encouraging lecturers and clinicians to sign too. Watch this space for more on students and access to essential medicines – or have a look at the links below:
MSF Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Patent 2 – a set of innovative ideas about changing patent regimes
Knowledge Ecology International – increasing access to knowledge
November 22nd, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Just wanted to add that the organization is actually a pan-national movement encompassing the US, Canada and the UK.
The reason I know this is that we’ve actually (Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) just established our chapter here, and I am aware that there is some tremendous progress being made by one particular Canadian university– the University of British Columbia. In fact, I will be meeting with the Technology Transfer Officer for UBC next week, to discuss the enormous success that the UBC chapter of UAEM has had in getting tangible policy changes at the university research level.
The reason I bring that up, is to simply say that; when we, as medical students (or any students for that matter) organize ourselves, we really can affect change. That potential (to bring about significant changes)coupled with the understanding that one of our responsibilities as physicians is to advocate for others, underscores a key point: That while we may only be in the training phase of our careers, and not quite ‘professionals’, simply being aware of issues like these and being open to discussing and engaging the issues with our peers, you may actually have done more than you think.
Amit.