2.1 - The Pharmaceutical Industry

Only 10% of global health research is devoted to 90% of world diseases. However, the pharmaceutical industry's profit margins are the highest of any industry and its wealth is growing rapidly, jumping 20% between 2001 and 2002. While the big pharmaceutical companies (Big Pharma) spend lavishly on marketing to push their wares in the wealthy west, increasingly medicalising our lives (shyness is now Social Anxiety Disorder and can be treated with Seroxat), tropical diseases which kill millions of people unable to pay for drugs are virtually ignored.

In fact, one third of the world's people cannot afford drugs. How can Big Pharma continue to convince rich consumers that we need their wares? They spend more on lobbying politicians and regulatory bodies than any other industry, thereby helping to convince medical professionals and other bodies that their products are legitimate.

2.2 - Patenting of and Access to Drugs

Industry lobbyists are pushing for wider patent protection under TRIPS (the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement). If they are successful, the cost of drugs in some countries could increase by 200%. Similarly, these Big Pharma lobbyists are pushing for increased patenting rights under the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement (FTAA), threatening to further restrict public access to drugs in Latin America.

Powerful pharmaceutical transnationals want to ensure that generic drugs cannot be produced (e.g. paracetamol for example would be branded by a particular company and only sold under that brand) and that all drugs are only to be sold in pharmacies. This would mean that manufactured drugs would become even more inaccessible for millions around the world and that the 80% of the rural population in the world that uses medicinal plants for health purposes would no longer have the right to do so.

Big Pharma essentially want to guarantee the right of multinationals to apply monopolizing patents on living organisms and to stop medicinal plants being distributed freely.

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