What is this, 1984? A
press release from the Yale Office of public affairs reports on an editorial written by Med School/EPH faculty and law students. The first line of the press release reads
Universities are in a unique position to draft licensing and patent strategies for development of life-saving medicines and technologies that benefit low-and middle-income countries
here's the clincher, though:
The report recommends that to make drugs universally accessible, universities should not patent their discoveries in targeted developing countries. The report also states that universities could negotiate clauses in their licensing agreements that require the products be available in low- and middle-income countries quickly, in sufficient quantities, and at an appropriate cost.
The editorial, written by Michael Merson, M.D., Dean and the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health at Yale School of Medicine, along with recent Yale Law School graduates Amy Kapczynski and E. Tyler Crone, points out that in 2001 alone, universities were granted over 3,000 patents. Merson stated, "They [patents] not only bring revenue, but controversy, when they ensure power over commodities that are the very currency of life itself."
The editorial refers to the discussions between Yale University and Bristol-Myers Squibb that resulted in the first patent concession on an AIDS drug and a 30-fold reduction in price of the patented drug in South Africa. "Such actions should not hurt universities' bottom line, diminish their ability to strike licensing deals, or discourage innovation because there is little profit at stake," Merson and his colleagues write in the editorial.
Don't get me wrong. The BMS-Yale patent concession was a really great thing. And it's highly possible that the folks who worte this report (probably the Law students did most of the work -- this is, after all, Yale we're talking about here, the nation's most prestigious laboratory of experimentation with new forms of casual labor -- have their heads and or hearts in the right places. What i'm interested in is the way in which the actual facts surrounding the patent release are erased. Much as Yale has taken credit for other things GESO has forced it to do over the past 13 years, the patent release was not an act of benevolence. Yale has made untold millions of of the royalties from d4t. The massive new Anylan Center was built with the royalties earned off the drug. In 2001, yundergrads and grad students, many of whom were members and organizers of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, fought to get BMS and Yale to release the patents on d4t in South Africa. The outcome, which this press release lauds as if it had occurred by benevolent fiat, in reality followed months of organizing. Yale, it seems, must obscure the facts, ut veritas non veniat in lucem (i.e., so that the truth doesn't come to light.)
We have to wonder how many of those other 3,000 patents were Yale's, and how many the university's acquired since. We have to wonder how much money they are making from these patents each year, and how many are dying because they cant afford the medication they need.
(which brings us back to the question of hospital debt.)
