The War Against Cipro
Schumer's biofoolishness.

By Robert M. Goldberg, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
October 25, 2001 9:00 a.m.

f all the measures designed to protect this nation and the world against bioterrorism, none would do so little good now — or work greater harm — than the effort to limit the profitability and patent rights of the companies investing time, money, and scientific capacity to protect the public against even more dangerous bioweapons than anthrax-filled envelopes. As we bail out the airline and insurance industries, and pump billions into defense (including billions to assure the profitability of our private defense industry), many politicians, led by Sen. Charles Schumer, want to seize the Cipro patent and hand it over to generic companies in order to stockpile government-supply depots more cheaply. But what would happen to the development of new medicines and vaccines — essential not only to the war against bioterror, but for the advancement of human health in general — if companies, particularly biotech and genomic firms, knew their patents could be seized under the guise of a public-health emergency, as a matter of public policy?

That is the model of biodefense and medical progress Sen. Schumer proposes, and that the Bush administration seems to endorse. The idea that we will make ourselves more secure against smallpox contagion or anthrax exposure by stripping patents from the firms that developed them is absurd in the current crisis, let alone as the foundation for a new bulwark against bioterror. It's also ironic that Schumer — who in the past has called for the use of generic and low-cost drugs in favor of the higher-priced prescriptions for similar illnesses — would be so quick to strip the patent of Cipro for use in anthrax therapy. An article in the May 1999 Journal of the American Medical Association by several leading biological-weapons experts (including those consulting the Bush administration) noted that "most naturally occurring anthrax strains are sensitive to penicillin, and penicillin has historically been the preferred therapy for the treatment of anthrax." The article goes on to cite other types of antibiotics, including the class to which Cipro belongs.

So there are plenty of drugs the government can purchase for stockpiling. Even the administration's top adviser on bioterrorism, Dr. D. A. Henderson, has said as much. Why pick on Cipro? Because it has a patent and turns a profit. Hence Jamie Love, of the Naderite Group Consumer Project on Technology, claims that protecting the patent of Cipro means endangering the public health — since Bayer AG, the company that makes Cipro, can't make it fast enough or cheap enough to satisfy Schumer and Love.

This is the politics of drug-company bashing — not public-health guidance or medical science or biowarfare strategy — and it now governs our response to bioterrorism. Once the government stockpiles a drug, it becomes a goody that, following the courageous example of our leaders in Washington, is dispensed prophylactically, in the absence of established medical protocols. This in turn will make it easier for anthrax to develop a resistance to Cipro, and make treatment with other antibiotics less effective.

But Schumer and now the administration — and others — seem less interested in waging an effective war against bioterrorism than in waging a public-relations battle against drug companies. The idea that patents deny the public access to essential drugs rings true, particularly after the campaign in Africa alleging that patents on AIDS drugs were responsible for denying millions of Africans life-saving medicines, by keeping generic companies at bay and drug prices too high. Yet here, too, the assault on patents as a public-health policy turns out to be mere camouflage for an attack on capitalism.

Dr. Amir Attaran, a researcher at the Center for International Development, surveyed 53 African nations and found that, on average, they had only three AIDS drugs patented. In fact, the vast majority of the countries surveyed had no patents at all. According to Attaran, whose article was also published in the October 2001 JAMA, if patents were depriving Africans of AIDS drugs, countries with no patents would have better access. But this isn't the situation in Africa. And if patents aren't keeping the poorest Africans from getting life-saving drugs — can they be blamed for keeping the richest country on earth from having an affordable supply of antibiotics?

The goal of Schumer and Love is not to protect the public against anthrax, or to develop incentives for encouraging companies to partner with government to create a more sophisticated bioweapons defense system. Their goal is to create a precedent for a government official to declare a public-health emergency, seize a drug patent, and hand it over to a generic company or government agency again and again, so that patents undertaken in the name of medical progress become worthless. Sadly, the Bush administration has stitched this hatred of capitalism into its fight against bioterrorism.

Pharmaceutical, biotech, and genomics firms should be regarded as strategic assets in the war against bioterror — not as enemies of the state. They have the ability to develop early-warning systems for public-health agencies, as well as new drugs, vaccines, and testing kits that can protect America against emerging (or reemerging) diseases. Witness the fate of Bioport, the sole remaining anthrax vaccine company, and its relationship with the government — full of quality-control problems, delays, and a haphazard research program — and you see the future of our fight against bioterrorists in the patent-free world of Jamie Love and Senator Schumer. You also see what the future would be like for medical progress in general. For as a recent study by the National Institutes of Health showed, most breakthroughs in medicine are emerging from private companies and the private sector.

We must not let politicians take our nation down such dangerous and ill-conceived paths. It is rumored that other drug and vaccine companies are stampeding to sell their products, or give them away to the emergency stockpile, to avoid being pilloried on the patent issue. This reactive response is understandable, but it's not what our nation will need to defend against a determined enemy over the next several years. To that end, we need to strengthen the war against bioterrorism with private capital, not impoverish such an important mission by stripping patents from the best technologies. Most of the companies in the forefront of this mission will be small startups. They need the fullest range of incentives and protections, equal to those of defense contractors, to insure that our nation is safe and strong. Similarly, to the extent that patents are not keeping important drugs from developing countries, but instead are encouraging investment in new and better medicines, America should strongly protect, in any trade negotiations, the intellectual property upon which we build a new medical future. Ultimately, it's Saddam and bin Laden who are America's enemies, not the nation's pharmaceutical and biotech firms. How could anyone forget that?