starting here.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a young woman who spent a couple months in Paris this year working at the International Chamber of Commerce on patent and licensing issues, especially in the area of medicine. It's an extremely important topic: there are millions of people around the world suffering and dying from diseases that can be treated by drugs they can't afford. On one side of the issue are the drug companies who, like you mentioned in the earlier thread, can spend upwards of a billion dollars on R&D for a new drug. They have the right to expect a profit for their efforts. On the other side are people who want to effectively negate international patents to lower the cost of drugs, but which would have devastating consequences for new drug research. If the drug companies can't expect to make a profit, then they have no incentive to produce new drugs.

The negative impact if we don't continue developing new drugs could well be felt within a generation, especially in the field of antibiotics. I believe antibiotics represent perhaps the greatest medical advance in human history. However, in less than 60 years, we've practically thrown it away through misuse that has resulted in bacteria becoming resistant. If we don't keep developing new antibiotics - and doing so faster than the bacteria can develop resistance - we might well find ourselves back in the bad old days before there were antibiotics, day when a simple infection could result in amputation or even death.

We discussed the issues for over an hour. It was a fascinating conversation. Your earlier thread about how to lower the cost of developing new drugs triggered an idea that I bounced off of her and I'll now bounce off of you.

You both discussed the problems with the current FDA certification process. It's overly long and expensive. However, who could we trust to do the necessary testing? It turns out there is an organization that has been doing consumer product testing for decades to very good effect. That organization might serve as a model for a new testing system. I'm talking about Underwriter's Laboratories (UL). They're a non-profit outfit that performs safety testing on a host of products. UL was founded and funded by the insurance companies to increase safety, thereby lowering insurance claims.

Perhaps UL could serve as a model for drug testing. It might even make sense for the insurance companies to head this effort since they're on the hook for product liability claims. I believe an organization like this could lower drug development costs substancially, which in turn could speed new drugs to market with lower prices.

As for the internation issues, lower drug development costs might make it more viable for licensing production in other countries where lower costs of labor and materials could result in lower drug prices while still giving the developing companies some reasonable return on their investment.