Published on January 31, 2006

Demand for IT protection to apply for medical treatments is against medical ethics, council president insists. A demand by US trade negotiators that intellectual-property-rights protection be applied in the case of medicinal treatments violates medical ethics, Dr Somsak Lolekha, president of the Medical Council of Thailand, said.

Somsak said council members would meet next week to discuss the health-care implications of the US demand, made during free-trade talks early this month, and relay their concerns to the

Thai negotiating team. He said he hoped members of the team would heed professional medical advice before taking up negotiations during the seventh round of talks.

Among the demands the US submitted to Thailand in early January was a request for patent restrictions in order to protect American medical firms’ diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical innovations from being copied without permission. That demand riles Thai medical professionals.

“Medicine is about saving lives, not making money,” Somsak said. “If we let someone enjoy exclusive rights to certain medical procedures, it means we are making money on the health of people.”

Somsak said that all medical innovations should automatically become common property rather then be allowed to be monopolised by certain companies. He added that patent restrictions on medical procedures would hamper the development of medical sciences and the skills of doctors.

Currently, any new procedure or treatment published in an international medical journal automatically becomes public property that doctors anywhere can apply in their treatment of patients. According to Somsak, if a patent system becomes effective as US trade negotiators demand, doctors will have to check if their prescribed treatments are subject to patent protection or not. Patients may thus be obliged to pay patent holders for their treatments.

Somsak said Thai patients might be unable to gain access to such cutting-edge treatments as stem-cell therapy, which would be patented by US companies that are world-leaders in biotechnology.

“Members of the Thai negotiating team should think twice before they trade off public health with some GSP trade benefits for a few commodities,” he said. “The GSP would last for a few years, but patents might last forever.”

Pennapa Hongthong

The Nation

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