Medicines and vaccines have helped improve the public health and economic well-being of societies and individuals in many countries worldwide.

Medicines and vaccines have helped improve the public health and economic well-being of societies and individuals in many countries worldwide.

But some stakeholders are concerned that research efforts may be ignoring the diseases of the very poorest people because of lack of economic incentives. Some also have the perception that patents make medicines unaffordable for many people, so there have been calls to abandon patents and other fundamental elements of intellectual property protection.

Studies show, however, that productive research is taking place on most of the neglected tropical diseases, and that patents are not a barrier to access. A 2004 analysis [Health Affairs, 23, no.3 (2004):155-166] demonstrated that less than one percent of medicines and vaccines described as essential by the World Health Organization are subject to meaningful patents in developing countries, yet very few people in those countries have access to those essential medicines. It is important to note we have adopted a general policy of not filing patents in the least developed countries. We believe strongly that weakening the intellectual property system would not enhance access but would reduce the incentives for further innovation, and that this would be detrimental to society as a whole.

While the incentive to do research does depend on economic factors such as intellectual property protection, it also is affected by the existence of functioning health care systems and infrastructure and on an effective regulatory framework. Inadequacies in any of these areas can inhibit access to medicines and vaccines and thus limit the incentive to pursue research. Our public policy and stakeholder engagement activities on this issue aim to inform relevant discussions about the unintended consequences of fundamentally altering the intellectual property system.

Our public policy and advocacy activities strongly promote the importance of the intellectual property rights system to foster biomedical innovation. To inform the debate on research in neglected tropical diseases and other diseases prevalent in the developing world, Merck has participated in numerous forums, including:

• The 2010 Institute of Medicine conference, The Causes and Impacts of Neglected Tropical and Zoonotic Diseases—Implications for Global Health and Opportunities for Novel Intervention Strategies, in Washington, DC. The forum covered the research agenda for neglected tropical diseases as well as programmatic opportunities for disease control and elimination.
• The 2010 Cambridge HealthTech conference Encouraging Development of Therapeutics for Neglected Tropical Diseases, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.