Conflict and Balance Between Intellectual Property Protection of Pharmaceuticals and Public Health
Abstract
In December 2019, the emergence of unexplained pneumonia (later named COVID-19) caught people all over the world off guard. Until now, the epidemic situation is still not optimistic, and global health is seriously threatened. Prevention and control measures for COVID-19, accurately all infectious diseases, people are no longer strange. There are three ways, that is, to control the source of infection (isolation), cut off the transmission path (wearing masks), and protect the susceptible population (vaccines and specific drugs).[]Â Among them, the last link - screening and developing new drugs and vaccines is the focus of the current efforts of medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and scientific research institutions. In January 2020, the news that Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology filed for a patent on the use of Remdesivir, an investigational drug from the US company Gilead, caused widespread controversy, because patent protection would limit people's access to vaccines and drugs.[]Â This also raises the question of how to balance the conflict between intellectual property protection for new pharmaceutical products and public health in the face of a global pandemic. This article mainly discusses three aspects, the fact of high cost, increasing complexities, and high rewarding of new pharmaceuticals, the status of strong protection in the pharmaceutical industry, and the negative public health impact of this strong protection. Although WTO members and some countries have responded accordingly to the consequences, the effect has been limited. This article will use this three-aspect analysis to in turn provide some information to increase the availability of vaccines and medicines for COVID-19 and other diseases.
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