DRUG PATENTS ARE GOOD FOR OUR HEALTH

Abbott discovered and developed Kaletra, the most widely used protease inhibitor medication to fight Aids by blocking the replication of HIV. The government of Brazil said that it would break our patent and produce a generic version locally in order to treat more patients. Brazil moved from this position and agreed to an arrangement that meets not only its needs and ours, but the world's - the need for continued innovation of new and better treatments for new and worse diseases.

Aids was a death sentence until late 1995, when the first of the HIV protease inhibitor medicines was introduced. Combined with other innovative medications, they helped turn HIV infection into a chronic, manageable disease for treated patients. That remarkable success against the greatest medical challenge of our time is the product of innovation, driven by the protection of intellectual property and the incentive it provides.

The negotiation raised a well-worn chorus of criticisms of the patent system, but failed to address the underlying question: how would our society continue to progress without it? The problem is that our global needs and global systems are in conflict. This threatens to harm one goal, innovation, in the name of another, access to medicine. Access is the goal the world cares about and one taken seriously by innovator companies (those that conduct research and development of new medicines) that have made significant contributions to this end across the developing world - from building healthcare infrastructure in Africa, to drastic price cuts that have benefited a wide range of countries, including Brazil. But it must be recognized that access is inseparable from innovation: without access, innovation is meaningless; without innovation, there is nothing to have access to.

As Abraham Lincoln recognized, in words chiseled into the Commerce Building in Washington: "The patent system added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius." Since Lincoln's birth, just 200 years ago, the way we live has progressed more than it did over millennia before. The difference has been technological progress; progress in medicine, in sanitation, in nutrition, in information, in hundreds of ways that have made our lives longer, healthier, safer and more comfortable. These improvements in the way we live are the result of continual innovation. That innovation has been made possible by intellectual property protection.

As Lincoln understood, genius alone is not enough to secure these benefits. We need the fuel. We need "interest" - the potential for return. We need it because, today, it takes so much to bring the fruits of genius to the people who require them. When Wallace Abbott, our company's founder, began producing effective new medicines in the 1880s, he was able to do so by hand at low cost. Today, creating a single new medication costs, on average, about $1bn. That massive funding comes from one source alone: private investors. Without a promise of return on that investment - "the fuel of interest" - that funding will go elsewhere, to opportunities that are less vital and less risky. And that is a risk our world cannot live with and cannot allow.

This is not a complicated economic and legal argument for intellectual property protection. It is a plain, pragmatic argument for results. We need new medications for the future. We will need them as much, or more, than we do today. Therefore, we must have continued innovation. We must encourage and protect that innovation.

Generics manufacturers have an important role to play in lowering the cost of treatment over time, which offers value to society. But society cannot save its way to health with old treatments that gradually lose their effectiveness and offer no help against new diseases. By definition, generics manufacturers make nothing new. And Aids is a disease that is always new - due to the constant evolution of the virus - and requires new solutions. Where will these come from if we hobble the patent system that drives innovation?

We must put an end to a tug-of-war that repeatedly threatens the source of medical progress. Threats to intellectual property are unconstructive and in no one's interest. Everyone who cares about this issue - governments, activists, innovators, patients - needs to work together to achieve both of the goals that we are dangerously putting into conflict. Yes, we must extend the benefits of innovation to those who need them; but, first, we must have that innovation. If we take away the fuel, the fire will soon burn out.

The writer is chairman and CEO of Abbott, the global healthcare company, and former chairman of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.