- © 2007 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
High profile Canadian doctors and scientists have joined student activists in a campaign to push universities to reform their policies so that research and life-saving medicines are more accessible in developing countries.
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), a student-led coalition with more than 35 chapters in North America, adopted the so-called Philadelphia Consensus Statement in November 2006. It calls on universities to engage in research for neglected diseases (“needs-based research”) and to measure research success according to its impact on human welfare, instead of the number of patents and revenue from licensing agreements. As well, it urges reforms to licensing agreements with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies so the developing world can have affordable access to the fruits of biomedical research.
The organization is very active at McGill, University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto.
The UAEM vows to hold universities, which are major contributors to the drug pipeline, to their commitment to creating knowledge that benefits society. “Universities have considerable untapped influence,” maintains the group, which is working to bring university presidents on board with the consensus statement. A national week of action is planned for mid-April.
Among the Canadians who have endorsed the statement are Nobel Laureate John Polanyi, former international president of Doctors Without Borders Dr. James Orbinski, co-chair of the 2006 International AIDS conference Dr. Mark Wainberg, International AIDS Society President-Elect Julio Montaner, University of British Columbia microbiologist Robert Hancock and former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis.
But it is “a lot of passionate students” who sustain the organization, says Caroline Gallant, the 29-year-old Canadian point person for UAEM and PhD candidate at McGill University's Department of Human Genetics. Gallant, originally a liberal arts student, switched disciplines after a stint at an eye clinic in Guyana. The Ford Foundation has provided US$100 000 over 2 years for administration and projects. UAEM's Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative provides a model for reform; it stipulates that grantees must ensure any medicines or health tools produced be available to the developing world at affordable prices — or patents revert to the foundation.
The UAEM also urges universities to partner with new organizations that are changing the research landscape, such as the Institute of OneWorld Health and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative.
In Canada, UAEM members are pushing for revisions to the much-heralded Access to Medicines Regime (formerly known as the Jean Chrétien Pledge to Africa Act) that was supposed to facilitate the export of affordable medicines to the developing world, but has failed to produce any pills.
Richard Gold, director of the McGill Centre for Intellectual Property Policy, endorsed the consensus statement because “universities have a public role, not to make money but to create knowledge and make it accessible as broadly as possible.” And while adding clauses to licensing agreements with biotechnology companies about access to research products in the developing world is “trickier” than ensuring fundamental research is publicly available, and might have to be done case by case, Gold says such conditions should not necessarily be a “deal breaker.”
The Canadian Institutes for Health Research is currently working out its own policies to broaden access to publicly funded research, following the lead of the Wellcome Trust and Britain's Medical Research Council, which require researchers to provide open access to research results, a stance long-endorsed by CMAJ.