How one policy could destroy an industry, and the jobs that come with it
By Eric Dean
Across the country, scientists are developing roughly 4,000 experimental drugs. They're developing these potential breakthroughs in laboratories meticulously constructed by union tradesmen and women.
These labs are the best in the world, thanks to these skilled craft workers. My organization, North America’s Building Trades Unions, spends over $1.2 billion in training each year across the United States. These investments help make sure that our work is as precise as today's most advanced medicines.
For over 15 years, companies in the biopharmaceutical industry and the building trades unions have been united through the Pharmaceutical Industry Labor-Management Association. As chairman, I’m committed to creating high-quality union construction jobs and promoting medical innovation to treat and cure disease.
Unfortunately, some policymakers have offered short-sighted, simplistic "solutions" to lower the price of medications and expand access – and these efforts would wreck American innovation.
The United States develops more new medicines than the rest of the world combined because we reject government price controls and assaults on intellectual property rights.
One such idea is "compulsory licensing." Compulsory licensing is “when a government allows someone else to produce a patented product or process without the consent of the patent owner or plans to use the patent-protected invention itself.” Essentially, this gives the government the ability to both grant and effectively take away a patent at whim.
If the U.S. government were to invoke this practice, the impact on both the biopharmaceutical industry and those that depend on the jobs the industry provides would be catastrophic.
Our members go to work every day at biopharmaceutical facilities because those companies have an opportunity to recoup their research and development investments. Without the intellectual property protections that the United States prides itself on, companies’ ability to invest billions into research and development -- and by extension infrastructure -- would not be possible.
Today, we take for granted U.S. patent and intellectual property protections, but this was not always in place. In the 1970s the United States lagged behind European countries, where more than twice as many new medicines were being developed. Less than 10 percent of new drugs were first introduced in the United States through the 1980s.
Once the United States strengthened intellectual property and patent protections, more companies moved their operations here. Now, more than half of all new drugs are created in the United States. And the vast majority are launched here before they're available in other countries.
If compulsory licensing were to be invoked, the implications are clear -- less investment in research and development and fewer jobs for our members. But the most consequential impact of this policy would be the upending of the U.S. patent structure and all the medical breakthroughs that people around the world will never benefit from as a result.
Eric Dean is general president of The International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers Union.
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