Global Pharmaceutical Policy – Ensuring medicines for tomorrow ’ s world ,

The golden era of the pharmaceutical industry has brought the world many useful new medicines, a very powerful industry, and nice profits for shareholders. The global pharmaceutical market was worth USD 650bn in 2007, and has potential to grow, especially in middle-income countries. However, the free market mechanism that helped to shape the global pharmaceutical system now shows some distinct flaws. The consolidation of industry and risk-averse behaviour increasingly inhibit the development of new chemical entities and breakthrough products. The concentration of power in a few major markets has distorted government decision making. Medicines are getting more expensive due to ever-greening of patents and increased lobbying for market exclusivity. Advertising has sometimes more to do with seduction of consumers and influencing prescribing patterns of physicians than the transparent dissemination of evidence-based, objective and comparative information. Market failure has blocked the developing world from getting new medicines for its diseases of poverty. Two billion people still go without access to affordable, good quality, effective and safe essential medicines. The current global pharmaceutical crisis is complex and not easily resolved at national levels. New innovative ideas are needed how to change regional and global pharmaceutical policies. This interesting book by Frederick Abbott and Graham Dukes, two eminent scholars in international law and pharmaceutical policy, aims to identify better ways to make use of the vast resources committed by governments and consumers for medicines, and to improve the level of prevention and treatment available to everyone. The book’s inspiration comes from an April 2007 round table seminar on “Global Pharmaceutical Regulation – tackling regional priorities” at Florida State University College of Law, Tallahassee, Florida, USA. It brought together 31 participants from across the globe and the pharmaceutical spectrum, who presented papers and discussed several problems affecting the global pharmaceutical sector. For example: high cost and roadblocks to genuine innovation in the USA; less research but more affordable access to medicines in Europe; huge generic exports but domestic regulatory problems in India and China; and finally the struggle in developing countries to provide access to essential medicines for not only the increasing HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria epidemics, but also to address the current market failure for