"The truth is that our human hope for a cure for cancer, AIDS and other illnesses should not depend on the government's will to pick the right research group to give money to," said chief judge Randall Rader, US court of Appeals for the federal circuit in Washington DC.
He spoke during the second day of the Accelerating IP and Innovation in South Africa conference. The gathering took place in Cape Town from 18-20 September 2011 and drew scores of intellectual property rights experts from around the world.
"Research for cures is predominantly privately funded, and patents play an important role in this," he added.
Before Rader became a judge, he worked for the American legislature and sat on the United States Appropriation committee, a committee that determines which organisation or research group would get federal funding for continuing research.
"Giving federal funding for health research was a significant responsibility of ours," he recalled. "We would decide what breast cancer researchers would get and how much the government would give to prostate cancer. We were basically the ones who would decide who would get money for health research, and how much."
"I felt very important in those days," Rader pointed out. "We were talking about millions of dollars. I felt it was a very important duty, and of course it was. I then however learned that the US government was responsible for less than 5% of the research funding for dread diseases including cancer and AIDS. The rest came and still comes from the private sector."
According to Rader, this particular set-up is not confined to the United States alone and is applicable to other parts of the world, South Africa included.
He added that patents play a crucial role in the funding of healthcare research. "The patent system is our best hope of finding cures for various diseases," Rader said, adding that it is a misconception that too many drugs are patented.
"A recent study of 350 medicines shows that less than 20 of these drugs were patented," he noted. "Most of the patented medicines that were surveyed, with an exception of one of two, did not strike me as essential. This tells me that the issue of patenting in the health sector is often over-emphasised."
For more information, go to www.accelaratingipsouthafrica.com.
