At this year’s Labour Party conference Jeremy Corbyn launched a new policy document on the pharmaceutical industry. He gave the example of nine year-old Luis Walker, who has cystic fibrosis but has been “denied the medicine he needs because its American manufacturer refuses to sell the drug to the NHS for an affordable price”. He went on to say that many others were being “denied lifesaving medicines by a system that puts profits for shareholders before lives”. In the case of cystic fibrosis, the company that holds the patent, Vertex, is asking for £105,000 per patient a year and rejected the NHS’s offer of half-a-billion pounds over five years.
Labour’s document – Medicines for the Many: Public Health before Private Profit – is a devastating critique of the industry, as well as the current policies on research and development. The government ploughs billions into R&D, benefitting hugely profitable companies, yet pays out billions more to buy the medicines developed from that research.
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