On 24 February 2005, 162 non-governmental organisations, academics and politicians issued an open letter urging the World Health Organisation to evaluate the draft Medical Research and Development Treaty that has been drawn up over the past two years by a group of economists, scientists and public health experts
Existing trade agreements designed to bolster medical R&D investments focus nearly exclusively on stronger intellectual property rights and higher drug prices. This approach imposes considerable costs, including:
problems of rationing and access to medicine,
costly, misleading and excessive marketing of products,
skewing of investment toward products that offer little or no therapeutic advance over existing treatments, and
scant investment in treatments for the poor, basic research or public goods.
The proposed new treaty seeks to reconcile innovation with increased access. At the core of the proposal is an obligation to finance medical R&D which would be tied to a country’s gross domestic product.
In addition, "credits" would be assigned for projects that are considered socially important (e.g. research on neglected diseases, projects that involve the transfer of technology and capacity to developing countries). Member countries would be allowed to trade "credits" with each other through a mechanism similar to that in the Kyoto protocol designed to reduce environmental emissions.
Finally, the draft proposes adoption of a best practices model for the support of open access biomedical research, and obligations that research supported by public funds enter open access archives.
The treaty is supported by organisations including the International Red Cross, Oxfam and Médecins sans Frontières, as well as leading medical researchers and intellectual property specialists.
