"A Double Dose of Failure"

Read Sebastian Mallaby's full OpEd piece in todays Washington Post.

France has enough Tamiflu on hand to treat 24 percent of its people. Taiwan says it will manufacture its own version of Tamiflu; "its scientists claim that, after a mere 18 days of lab work, they've figured out how to copy the drug and will attempt to do so on a large scale if necessary. India, Thailand and Argentina have all said they want to make the drug themselves if a pandemic materializes."

"The United States has failed to get in line early. It's been weeks since panicky soccer dads began stockpiling Tamiflu. But the government has so far ordered enough of the drug and a similar medicine, Relenza, to cover just 1.5 percent of the population. Last week's avian flu "blueprint" from the Bush administration belatedly proposes to procure treatment courses for 75 million Americans. But Congress has yet to come up with the money, and the plan assumes that state and local governments will contribute $510 million to the procurement effort. The scope for argument and delay seems endless.........

"Panicked by its own lateness, the Bush administration has bullied Roche into opening a new production operation in the United States; if Roche had refused, the administration was ready to break the patent........Coming on top of similar bullying four years ago of Bayer, the maker of an anti-anthrax drug, this browbeating sends a clear signal: If you make a drug that turns out to be really important, don't expect patent laws to protect you.

"So the United States has the worst of both worlds. It has failed to secure Taiwan-style access to medicines, and it has failed to preserve incentives for new medical discovery. It is getting ready to pay Roche buckets of money for drugs that may arrive too late, because it wants to respect intellectual property. But at the same time it has reminded drug companies that, if they want to be left alone to make money, they had better confine themselves to unpolitical ailments such as cholesterol and asthma."