Public-funded medical research results should be shielded from pharmaceutical lobbying to ensure affordability of medicines.

While the pharmaceutical industry plays a vital role in developing and commercializing drugs, allowing private interests to influence the outcomes and use of publicly funded research can lead to monopolistic pricing, which makes essential medicines unaffordable and inaccessible to the public that paid for their development.

The Rationale for Public-Funded Research

Public funding, primarily through government agencies like the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) or the EU's Horizon Europe program, is the engine of early-stage biomedical innovation. This "basic research" is often high-risk and has no immediate commercial application. It's focused on understanding disease, identifying potential drug targets, and developing new scientific techniques. The public invests in this research through its taxes with a clear expectation: the resulting knowledge should be a public good, contributing to broad societal benefit, including the development of affordable medicines.

How Pharmaceutical Lobbying Affects Public Research

Pharmaceutical lobbying can influence publicly funded research in several ways, often subtly shifting its focus from public interest to private profit.

• Influencing Research Priorities: Lobbyists can advocate for funding to be directed toward specific areas that align with a company's commercial pipeline, rather than a broad public health need. For example, a company may lobby for more public money to be allocated to research on a particular type of cancer where they have a potential drug candidate, even if the public health burden of that cancer is lower than other diseases.

• Controlling the Narrative: Pharmaceutical firms often contribute to or fund research that is nominally independent but supports their policy positions. This can include commissioning academic studies that highlight the high costs of drug development to justify high prices or funding a patient advocacy group to argue for the rapid approval of a specific drug. This "soft lobbying" allows them to control the narrative around a drug's value and development cost.

Key Mechanisms for Protecting Public Research

To ensure that publicly funded research results in affordable medicines, specific mechanisms and policy changes are necessary.

1. Attaching Conditions to Public Funding

One of the most effective ways to protect publicly funded research is to attach clear conditions to the funding itself.

• "Reasonable Pricing" Clauses: Governments and public funding bodies can mandate that any drug developed using public funds must be made available to the public at an affordable price. These clauses, sometimes referred to as "reasonable pricing" agreements, ensure that the public's investment is repaid with a tangible public benefit.

• Mandatory Technology Transfer: When a public university or research institution licenses a publicly funded invention to a private company, the license agreement should include a clause requiring the transfer of the "know-how" and technology to generic manufacturers after a set period. This would ensure that when a patent expires, generic competitors can quickly enter the market, driving down prices.

2. Strengthening "Open Science" Principles

The Open Science movement advocates for making scientific research, data, and publications freely accessible to everyone. This is a powerful antidote to pharmaceutical lobbying because it reduces the ability of private companies to monopolize knowledge.

• Mandatory Publication of Results: Public funding agencies should require all researchers to publish the results of their clinical trials in public registries, regardless of whether the results are positive, negative, or inconclusive. This prevents "publication bias," where only trials with positive results are published, distorting the medical knowledge base and potentially encouraging the use of ineffective or harmful drugs.

• Open Access to Data: Researchers should be required to make their raw data publicly available so that other scientists can replicate the findings, leading to more robust and reliable research. It also makes it difficult for companies to selectively use data to support a lobbying campaign.

Countering the Argument for Profit Incentives

The pharmaceutical industry and its allies argue that these measures would stifle innovation by removing the profit incentive. They claim that without the prospect of high returns, no company would risk investing in the later stages of clinical development.

• Public Contribution is Already Significant: This argument ignores the fact that a huge portion of drug development is already publicly funded. Studies show that a majority of the basic research that leads to a new drug is done in public universities and government laboratories. The public is already taking a huge financial risk.

• The Problem of "Evergreening": The industry's profit motive often leads to "evergreening", where companies make minor modifications to a drug to secure a new patent and extend their monopoly. This is not true innovation and is often a direct result of the pressure to protect profit margins. Policies that encourage public-private partnerships with clear conditions for affordability could incentivize genuine innovation while still ensuring public access.

In conclusion, shielding public-funded medical research from pharmaceutical lobbying is not anti-business; it is pro-public health. By attaching clear conditions to public funding, embracing open science principles, and strengthening regulatory oversight, governments can ensure that the public's investment in research is not used to create monopolies that lead to unaffordable medicines.