India is known as the “pharmacy of the world”, supplying vital generic medicines at low prices to health services including the NHS. You’d think it would be in the interest of the UK government to keep it that way. Yet, as campaigners writing to the Guardian last month pointed out, a trade deal nearing completion with India could take a wrecking ball to that arrangement – cheered on by big pharma, which stands to profit.
It’s about patents, a once-dusty subject that has become a life-and-death issue. Put simply, pharmaceutical companies that invent a new medicine are entitled to a patent on it in the US, UK and Europe lasting up to 20 years, allowing them a monopoly on sales at high prices. They spend billions on research and recoup billions. That’s the bargain. Once the patent has expired, generics companies can copy the drug, competing to sell it at affordable prices.
