Are biotech/pharma companies obliged to make their products available?
This question came up in this morning’s session entitled "Biotechnology’s Responsibility for Human Rights?" Selling drugs isn’t like selling cars or shoes. Health is a social product, one that many feel is not just a product, but a basic human right. For-profit companies, however, are the ones making those drugs and so are also obliged to investors.
So it raises the difficult question: if you’re in the business of selling health, do you have a special responsibility to make the drugs you're making accessible to people who can’t afford them? Two people on the panel said yes, including Steven Holtzman, the CEO of Cambridge-based Infinity Pharmaceuticals. George Annas, a bioethicist from Boston University, said that it's in the interest of a company, especially a big one that can afford it, to make drugs available, or else you'll be tried in the court of public opinion and seen as pirates.
