But blaming drug companies is too easy a response.

For example, US pharmaceutical companies have stronger intellectual property protection at home than in the EU. Entertainment will become increasingly contentious with online distribution of films.

Most pharmaceutical companies, for example, lack effective innovation supply chains.

Curtailing prices, they say, would choke off R D and stifle innovation.

1 Target 17 In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.

One hears this argument for many modern industries, from big food to big pharma to big finance.

With regard to intellectual property rights and technology transfer, especially in the context of essential drugs, UNCTAD should help developing countries build up their productive capacity in partnership with the pharmaceutical companies.

The fundamental purpose of drug companies is to produce profits for shareholders.

The important issue is not how much drug companies spend on R D, but whether we consumers get our money s worth.

Governments and major pharmaceutical companies must be sure that poorer nations receive the medical supplies they need.

This would make its patients healthier, drug makers more profitable, and India better off, because employment increases.

The patents on those drugs were held by a number of Western pharmaceutical companies that were not necessarily willing to make those patents available.

Within five years, large American multinational pharmaceutical companies had acquired all six producers of steroid intermediates in Mexico, four of which had been Mexican owned.

Life insurance companies, drug firms, businesses providing services for the elderly, and investors in retirement real estate would all benefit from increased longevity, while defined benefit pension plans and annuity providers would lose.

Finally, incentives must be found to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs that fulfill the needs of patients still awaiting therapy.

Only 10 multinational companies, five of which are United States owned, account for nearly half of global drug sales in some instances, United States companies are the sole manufacturers of certain drugs.

Secondly, drug companies are not going to develop really sophisticated psychoactive drugs. We know that most mental illnesses have a biological component that can be dealt with.

Moreover, it is only a localized effort at rebalancing a global intellectual property (IP) regime that is tilted heavily toward pharmaceutical interests at the expense of social welfare.

The impact of marketing efforts by pharmaceutical companies and publicity probably plays a role in the emerging tendency to over diagnose bipolar disorder.

International rules on patents and copyright reflect the ability of pharmaceutical companies and Hollywood to take just two examples to get their way.

Penalties for drug companies failure to report and communicate safety information must be increased dramatically if they are to serve as effective deterrents

But only about 15 of the drugs that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved recently were developed by the same company that markets and sells them, meaning that many major pharmaceutical companies depend on the innovation ecosystem to advance their products.

Drug companies often lament that the firms from which they are sourcing innovations do not perform clinical trials to their specifications, forcing them to repeat the work.

The bottom line is that, despite industry rhetoric, drug companies are growing less and less innovative.

Enabling developing nations to access vitally needed pharmaceuticals at rates reasonably close to the cost of production will not put transnational drug companies out of business.

We hope to encourage Indian pharmaceutical companies to establish production facilities in Africa to cater to the increasing requirement for affordable medicines, especially for antiretroviral drugs.

As in the airline business, the actual customers won t be the users, but rather the vendors who want to influence users behavior pharmaceutical companies who want patients to buy their drugs, along with insurers and employers who want to lower long term costs.

This bias is reinforced by the marketing message of pharmaceutical companies to physicians, which has emphasized research on delayed diagnosis and under recognition of bipolar disorder, possibly sensitizing clinicians accordingly.

Big drug companies actually spend relatively little on R D far less than they spend on marketing and administration and even less than what they have left over in profits. In 2002, for example, the top ten American drug companies had sales of 217 billion.

And what about profits? For many years, drug companies in the United States have had higher profits than any other industry after they ve paid for R D and all their other expenses.

Now, with drug companies increasingly seeking to develop medications that target particular racial groups, the long taboo subject of racial genetics has reemerged.

Now we count on the willingness of drug companies to make that happen. We count on those companies that understand that it is in the interest, not only in the interest of the global good, but also in their own interest, to move from conflict to collaboration, and through the Medicines Patent Pool they can make that happen.

Antiviral drugs are a class of medication used specifically for treating viral infections.

Because the poor have so little money to spend, drug companies, under current arrangements, have little incentive to do research on the diseases that afflict them.

Indeed, pharmaceutical companies have already begun to investigate other NMDA receptor antagonists, together with drugs that act on a different part of the glutamate system, as possible treatments for depression.

In many areas of the world, people are unable to afford treatment with antivirals as they either lack insurance coverage or the insurance they have will not pay for antivirals.

These drugs are among the most widely sold drugs in the world, and are generally considered effective.

Resala volunteers teach reading to blind students photo from Resala

Talking Pictures About the Vanuatu Society for Disabled People. Port Vila VSDP.

Indeed, Public Citizen, a US consumer advocacy group, has calculated that, in the US alone, the pharmaceutical industry has paid out billions of dollars as a result of court judgments and financial settlements between pharmaceutical manufacturers and federal and state governments.

Internet Society Yemen Chapter (ISOC Yemen)

Committee for Hispanic Children and Families

Environmental Protection Society

Fazaldad Human Rights Institute

U.S. Federation for Middle East Peace