Earlier this month an article by Christian Barry and Matt Peterson called “Shallow Cuts” was published on the Policy Innovations website. Policy Innovations is a publication of the Carnegie Council and its mission is to “To highlight the best new thinking on a fairer globalization.”
Barry and Peterson assert that GSK’s recent price reduction and patent pooling are insufficient in the face of the dire need for access to medications in the developing world. They make three major points:
- Reducing prices to 25% of what a U.S. or British citizen pays in the world’s least developed countries sounds good, but the reduced prices would still be astronomical for citizens in those countries.
- GSK has pledged to reinvest a fifth of the profits that they make in the least developed countries back into the countries’ healthcare infrastructure. Profits in these countries are slim, so what is a fifth of slim? Very slim.
- Finally a “patent pool” sounds great, but dig deeper and the flaws abound.
Is GSK doing a great deal more than other pharmaceutical companies? Yes. Are GSK’s efforts going to engender substantive social change? It doesn’t appear that way, but perhaps concerned citizens around the world can push them in that direction.
Read “Shallow Cuts” in its entirety.
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