ABSTRACT
At the height of last year’s anthrax scare, the U.S. government discovered that its stockpile of medicines used against diseases such as anthrax and smallpox contained only a few million doses. Nervous public health officials admitted that this supply was inadequate to treat even one metropolitan area exposed to biological attack. The obvious solution was to mobilize the pharmaceutical industry and increase drug production as quickly as possible, but companies such as Bayer, the maker of the antibiotic CIPRO, balked at allowing competitors to make generic versions of their patented drugs. Many countries permit the compulsory licensing of pharmaceutical patents in public health emergencies, but the practice is unheard of in the U.S., which has traditionally supported strong patent protection for drug manufacturers (Chartrand 2001). The government of Canada acted decisively by suspending Bayer’s patent rights and ordering one million doses from generic manufacturers. The U.S. response was uncertain and wavering. Health officials initially promised to respect Bayer’s patents but then suggested
that the government might resort to price controls or compulsory licensing in order to obtain the needed drugs (Bradsher 2001). Representative Sherrod Brown of Ohio went so far as to introduce legislation to that effect in November (Brown, H.R. 3235). Under this pressure and facing a public relations disaster, Bayer and other drug companies agreed to meet the government’s price in exchange for keeping their patent rights intact.
