Why We Need Open Source Pharma
BY PETER GRABITZ

Something is wrong here. Medicines keep getting more and more expensive - often times without any apparent reason. In fact: They are not just passively getting more expensive: Someone raises prices. It is the industry behind drug development that does it. How come that they fail so badly? The global R&D model is centered around a market - not around the public health need. Having this in the back of our minds it becomes clear why there was no vaccine ready for Ebola, why the pipeline for new antibiotics is as empty as it possibly could be: It was never the industry's aim to cure or help people in need. The basic goal was to make profit. And here they didn't fail: In fact they are doing really well!

Enough complaints! What it actually needs is a viable alternative: New ways of R&D, where are you?

At Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (uaem.org) we are already trying to rethink the way R&D is done - by holding Universities accountable for public returns on public investment into basic research. Clearly more has to be done. Open Source Pharma can help finding other ways out of the seemingly alternativeless broken system today.

Peter Grabitz, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
Montreal, Canada / Berlin, Germany
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