We've written before about orphan diseases, and about new nonprofit models for doing pharmaceutical research. This story about the Institute for OneWorld Health, a little nonprofit that may well cure black fever -- an ailment which kills 500,000 people every year -- brilliantly illustrates why humanitarian science on open principles matters:
PATNA, India The drug that could have cured Munia Devi through a series of cheap injections was identified decades ago but then died in the research pipeline because there was no profit in it.
So Mrs. Devi lay limp in a hospital bed here recently, her spleen and liver bulging from under her rib cage as a bilious yellow liquid dripped into her thin arm. The treatment she was receiving can be toxic, and it costs $500. But it was her best hope to cure black fever, a disease known locally as kala azar, which kills an estimated half-million people worldwide each year, almost all of them poor like Mrs. Devi.
Soon, however, all that may change. A small charity based in San Francisco has conducted the medical trials needed to prove that the drug is safe and effective. Now it is on the verge of getting final approval from the Indian government. A course of treatment with the drug is expected to cost just $10, and experts say it could virtually eliminate the disease. If approval is granted as expected this fall, it will be the first time a charity has succeeded in ushering a drug to market.
These approaches are brilliant and needed. The fact is that much of the human suffering in the world is unneccessary. We know how to cure or prevent many of the maladies afflicting people, from malaria to malnutition, and we have the capacity to invent cures or preventative measures for the rest. Those these efforts are expensive, we can afford them
The mere fact we can alleviate suffering is, to my mind, sufficient argument for doing so; but there are other arguments as well. Some have to do with realizing that one a small, globalized planet, public health is of neccessity a global enterprise. Some have to do with the fact that hunger and disease are major drags on the economies of many developing nations, and that if we want a sustainable future for those nations (and again, on a small planet, no future which leaves out large groups of people will last very long), we need to help their people find health. Finally, we don't know what unexpected benefits this research may bring: opening new routes for medical research along these lines may well provide public domain benefits for everyone.
