German Velasquez
South Centre Research Paper 82
November 2017.
The debate on generic medicines is not new. What makes it different today is that attacks levelled against biological products are couched in ever more “technical” and abstruse language that confuses even the World Health Organization (WHO).
Innovative biological drugs, which have been introduced on the market in the past 20 to 30 years, make up, in terms of numbers, no more than 2 per cent of the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines but, in terms of cost, account for 15 per cent to 20 per cent of national drug expenditure.
The high price of biological drugs stems mainly from two new factors: first, a change in the pharmaceutical industry’s approach to price-setting and, secondly, the introduction of additional barriers to the entry of generics into the market. In any debate on the impossibility of producing “identical” drugs, it should be made clear that what is at stake is not identical products but therapeutic equivalents. What matters to the patient, after all, is whether or not the drug can prevent, cure or mitigate the effects of the illness.
Click here for the full paper (PDF)
QUT Media4th November 2025 The United Kingdom Parliament is considering a bill aimed at making smoking obsolete, which has been
Speaking at the Global Expert Network on Copyright User Rights Symposium on 16 June 2025, Professor Christophe Geiger argues for
On 25 September 2025, Professor Wend Wendland, delivered the 14th Peter Jaszi Distinguished Lecture at American University in Washington D.C..
On September 18, 2025, the Italian Senate definitively approved the country’s first comprehensive framework law on artificial intelligence (AI). The
Por Andrés Izquierdo Durante la segunda semana de agosto, fui invitado a hablar en la Feria Internacional del Libro de
By Andrés Izquierdo AI, Copyright, and the Future of Creativity: Notes from the Panama International Book FairDuring the second week