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While patent pooling may be a step toward opening up access to knowledge for researchers who wish to help people in developing countries, students at MIT have asked, “Is MIT doing enough?” Neglected tropical diseases are not the only diseases that kill people in developing countries: Heart disease, HIV/AIDS, and stroke are among the leading causes of death among people in poor countries. These diseases are not “neglected,” because they affect the rich and poor alike, and new technologies are being developed to treat them...
Universities like MIT are starting to acknowledge that patenting can serve as a double-edged sword. It can be used to develop university technology into useful products by attracting investors, but it can also interfere with access to knowledge by blocking researchers and patients from accessing vital ideas created at universities. What can academic institutions do to ensure that all important treatments coming from our labs—not just NTD treatments—reach people in developing countries...
...support a joint statement announcing a broad-based commitment to “promote availability of health technologies in developing countries for essential medical care.” One of the key points of this document stated that university intellectual property should not serve as a barrier to global access: Drugs created in academic labs should not be priced out of reach for poor people in poor countries. The joint statement has now gained the support of the National Institute of Health, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Boston-area Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women?...
...signing the statement, Harvard University has begun employing creative licensing strategies to ensure that its patents will not be asserted in ways that harm patients in the developing world. Even better, Harvard’s strategy is broad-based. The office of technology development is working to apply global-access strategies to all medical technologies emerging from our labs—not just neglected tropical diseases. It is also developing ways to provide access in lower-middle-income countries like India, where the majority of the population still cannot afford expensive medical treatments. While much work remains to be done...
MIT’s announcement is an important step in acknowledging that creative strategies must be used to stop university patents from serving as a barrier to further innovation and access to essential medicines. Yet contributing patents to the GlaxoSmithKline patent pool is the least a university can do. Let us hope that MIT, along with other universities who have yet to join in a more broad-based commitment to global access, will soon get the message that they can do much more...