Photo from Flickr / WTO
Although the WTO Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights ( TRIPs ) is referred to as an agreement , it is everything short of that term , especially where Africa is concerned . The final draft of TRIPs was adopted in 1995 with minimum input by African countries who could not afford the highly skilled and expensive representation needed during the negotiation of trade issues at the WTO . Under the TRIPs agreement , it became possible to place international patents on medicines for the first time . What this means is that once a pharmaceutical company in any WTO member state has patented a pharmaceutical process or product , it can no longer be produced by any other pharmaceutical company in any member state . The WTO TRIPs agreement prevents member countries from producing medicines patented in another member country even if half of a country ’ s citizens are being wiped out by a plague . Once the country cannot afford to buy medication from a pharmaceutical production company in the West , usually , they would be allowed to perish .
Following the adoption of TRIPs , there was an astronomical increase in the cost of life-saving medications originating from Europe and the United States . Countries with little or no research and development base were losing sick citizens in hundreds of thousands ; African countries were the worst hit . Countries like India that could manufacture generic versions of these medications were barred from doing so .
With an emphasis on pharmaceuticals , American doctors for centuries taught that medical knowledge should be shared freely for the benefit of patients and never for private commercials ’ benefits . Anyone who can muster technological know-how to help the suffering of humanity should not be discouraged from doing so . The American Medical Association made it a basis of its earliest Code of Medical Ethics in 1847 , with a declaration that considered it “ derogatory to professional character ” for a physician “ to hold a patent for any surgical instrument , or medicine .” This was a
08