Good Medicine? (Party like it's 2001)

Yale bows to student pressure on another patent (this time Ed4t instead of d4t - go figure) and agrees to permit generic manufacturing of an aids drug in "low and middle income countries." (Does that include this one?.) Now these activists are trying to pressure the drug company that jointly holds the patent to do the same.

UAEM member Shayna Strom '02 LAW '09 said Yale should take the initiative in enabling drugs based on university research to be produced more cheaply for use in low-income countries

"We're glad that the University has made the decision not to patent in low-income countries, although we think there are further steps to be taken," Strom said. "The University had more leverage before it licensed the drug, but President Levin still has a great opportunity to set the tone and set the agenda."

Strom said the move would give Yale credibility as a leader in promoting drug accessibility, similar to the way Harvard recently received credit for being a leader in early action reform.

"Yale has a brief opportunity here to decide whether to lead or to follow," Strom said.

But Robert Alpern, the dean of the medical school, cautioned that if universities excercise too many restrictions on their licensing partners, they could lose them altogether.

If the drug sells well, the University will receive financial returns on the product as compensation for its research efforts in discovering the chemical. But School of Medicine Dean Robert Alpern said the benefits of discovering Ed4T will only be realized if Yale allows the pharmaceutical company to exercise its international rights over the chemical.

"We try to work with pharmaceutical companies to give the drug away in poorer countries," Alpern said. "In general, with these drugs the pharmaceutical industry is very good. I don't think the solution is to tamper with the licensing."

The specter of corporate retreat mobilized here seems somewhat phantasmic. Clearly pharmaceutical companies wouldn't be interested in the drug if they didn't think money could be made. And the fundamental question seems to me how or if university researchers can free their work from the yoke of the logic of the boardroom.