Reimagining pharmaceutical innovation | Thomas Pogge at TEDxCanberra

By reforming harmful supranational regulations, Thomas Pogge is developing a complement to the patent system to stimulate pharmaceutical innovations that would be accessible, without delay, to poor and affluent patients alike around the world.
In this talk at TEDxCanberra 2011, ANU and Yale academic and ethicist, Professor Thomas Pogge outlines an idea that could revolutionise health outcomes and distribution of pharmaceuticals in both the developed and developing world.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations).

[@jadacook55]

Great TED talk.

[@OLGALAZINDr]

Lovely, innovators are the future!

[@Hellsconsort]

I enjoyed listening to him speak. I would raise the point though that another hugely effective way to drastically lower disease and illness is to pressure religious institutions into allowing members to use (and furthermore promote) condoms and other forms of protection. This would also to no small degree combat poverty.

[@egorl9644]

10 years past, everything still stays the same, what a world to live in, great idea and afford tho

[@docholliday2277]

I like it some clarification is needed. like how will you decide on what direction to go in? referring the last minute or so of the video. what will be your guide for making that decision.

[@mmazourov]

Everyone who is developing a blockbuster drug (gene therapies in particular) would end up going with the old model - the one he is suggesting will simply not sustain the pricing of the blockbuster drugs (e.g. a new SMA gene therapy from Novartis is $2M per "dose", albeit it's "one and done").

[@AngstromTechnologyUK]

Inspiring

[@MunaEndel]

@GoldwireIT That is its main problem, people wont switch onto something, that 'might' work, on a dare. Can you provide some links to discussions/details that arent from Zeitgeist movies, youtube vids or the RBE website, cause those are way too simplistic. Dont get me wrong here, it can be a great idea but atm it seems like "lets live in peace and harmony" - a nice thought but you should show how it would work in the real world with all its complexity and how to get there.

[@purpleninjavToTv]

In order to lower long term healthcare costs, there must be a relatively free market in healthcare. Socialized healthcare seems to only be a solution for short term problems such as ER visits etc. An example of a free market healthcare system would be the very unregulated market of lasik eye surgery where the price per eye has dropped significantly through the free market. Healthcare should be mainly treated as a commodity.

[@GoldwireIT]

@sweYoda2 I was thinking the exact same thing as soon as I started to watch this. People like him will always get drowned out. Even the idea of a RBE will get drowned out because not enough people will ever know about it and fully understand it and advocate for it. The only solution I have worked out is that things will change the same way they have always changed...Just a slow and steady progression so eventually technology will free us. Watch the documentary Transcendent Man.

[@smacheck]

@aganon77 Yes, low developed areas do need more condoms, however, did you consider the fact that it's also the poverty, illness, education, culture, and their bad situation in general that influences breeding rate? This is a mechanism of many living organism on Earth - if survival rate drops, the number of offspring grows.

[@Hellsconsort]

@kezzy234 Some do. Many are also unwanted but made because of religious beliefs on contraception. Those greater size families also mean more feeding, medicine, financial investment, emotional care.

[@LeShoost]

@tracychess While I agree, to a certain extent, with the idea that the first world indeed needs to think of health in this way, the third world is far too hindered by terrible living conditions, sanitation issues, food and water access, mis-education on diseases and their transfer, war, genocide, corruption, slavery, etc. etc. and so on and so forth. No issue this big has a bandaid quick-fix, and unfortunately life-threatening disease is still the primary concern of most of the world.

[@michaeldjarmotsky1820]

pharmisutical companies should make brand new anesthics as strong as it cnn possibly made.the stronger the better.for theev most strogest pain and or pains of them all.

[@GoldwireIT]

@MunaEndel If a RBE isn't put to test how would one know if it would work or not? Have you actually studied the details of it beyond watching 10 minute videos?

[@sweYoda2]

@MastermindX WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!?!?!!

[@sweYoda2]

@MastermindX What? I am pro resource based economy.

[@musiclover-rf3wr]

i think his hif idea may be beneficial with some modifications but i doubt it will apply to the pharmaceutical industries in developing countries. There are so many potential hit and lead compounds available from natural sources that can be developed into drugs but due to financial constraints, these companies have no R n D departments and instead focus on generic manufacturing.

[@MastermindX]

@sweYoda2 That's why the system he designed would benefit private pharmaceutical companies as much as benefit everyone else, weren't you paying attention?

[@JoshuaFechterentrepreneur]

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[@vpdisco]

Diet will be an improvement on health. But what he is talking about has more to do with things like tuberculosis and malaria which are indirectly cause by conditions of poverty. How much omega-6 and trans fat are in a diet to someone from Haiti is largely irrelevant.

[@sweYoda2]

Nothing will change within the monetary system. I think guys like these are great, but they are naive to think that things will actually change. His hearth is in the right place, but his logic is flawed. Rich owners of companies don't care. Resource based economy is the way to go!

[@TheDenrix]

#tumbwl

[@TracyKolenchuk]

I was greatly saddened by this presentation. Thomas Pogge consistently uses the word 'health' as if it were 'not sick'. Health is independent of illness and can be measured and improved independent of illness and independent of drugs. Most of the people in the world are not dying from 'illness that should be cured by drug', they are dying from illnesses that should be cured by healthiness. Fixing the drug systems will not improve health. We need a health paradigm, not an illness paradigm.

[@aucklandir01]

I like the idea. The current system doesn't work that's for sure. Perhaps we should just stop making public health based on a capatilist, profit-based system. Perhaps worldwide governments should just create government owned pharma companies with no other shareholders and employ researchers and produce medicines only in the public sector. A bit like they do with power companies in NZ. A government based monopolistic producer if you will. I think until you remove health from a profit based system there will never be equality because health will never be based on income but only on profit which, as we have discovered, is not in the best interest of the majority, only the wealthy minority.

[@Poszlakowaneopinie]

and who will regulate regulators so they won't be corrupted?

[@mmazourov]

This would kill innovation in pharma. There's already huge pressure on the industry to produce more efficacious drugs, which has led to less meds getting to the market, if pharma companies will get less ROI, they'll just supply markets where they're making most money. In the end, it's the patients who will suffer. Think people are forgetting that producing pharmaceuticals is a BUSINESS and although cost of manufacturing "per pill" might be low, research costs are huge.

[@koreymacdonald501]

Did you watch the video or no?

[@mmazourov]

@@koreymacdonald501 not only I watched the video, I have also been working in the industry for the past 18 years. I have experience across the product development and commercialisation cycle including pharmacoeconomucs. Do you?

[@HGMoeller]

Tell me again how you consider 35 years (the life expectancy for cave men) old? I might be prone to approve the concept of the caveman-diet, but claiming that 90% of diseases can be cured with diet and we would have a life expectancy equal to the one today is ridiculous!

[@katherinemcmanus616]

ah yes higher standards, but.....money SO nice....

[@astroxvz8974]

pogger

[@spamandeggs99]

Thomas Pogge is a professor of philosophy. How does he know so much about the pharmaceutical industry? I can guarantee he spent 0 minutes talking to anybody who actually works in the industry, half the shit he says is so unbelievably off the mark it rivals Paris Hilton level thought. Those of you that want to drink his Kool-Aid, be my guest. You can't be convinced. Those of you with genuine curiosity, I encourage you to research how/why pharma $ are spent the way that they are.

[@MastermindX]

@sweYoda2 So you only came here to preach? That's sad, you'd benefit much more from TED if you had your mind open to different ideas that you had not considered before.

[@learn905]

this is a bad idea who is gunna evaluate the health effect how are they not gunna be a waste of money and target of lobbyist how is this gunna stop lobbyist its just gunna create a wasteful beaurcrocy and more companies having a bigger monopoly

[@MunaEndel]

Every time there is a video about innovation or environmental problems someone suggests a resource based economy. Sorry, but it seems like a stupid idea, you have no evidence that it would work, there are some ~10min vids about it that dont explain anything and may get a few teenagers excited. You need a bit more to reasonably propose another system for world economy. As for this, a few pieces of legislation can make it happen, granted that people will push for it and oppose corporate lobbying

[@mohammadfarahani7535]

The guy has no idea about pharma industry!