Editorial: Playing hardball with Tamiflu

Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005 | 8:09 a.m.

It is highly possible that the bird flu virus spreading through poultry flocks in Asia and parts of Europe could mutate into a form that would make infected people contagious. If that were to happen, the lives of millions of people around the world would be threatened. A 1918 outbreak of a mutated bird flu virus killed 50 million people, including more than 600,000 in the United States.

Tamiflu, an anti-viral drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1999, is thought by health care experts to be the most effective treatment now on the market for infected people. There is a problem, however.

The rights to sell Tamiflu pills are owned by Roche Holding AG, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. The company has so far refused to grant rights to any other drug manufacturer to make a generic equivalent. And its own production capacity is far short of the current worldwide need to stockpile the pills. It is estimated that the United States, for example, has only enough Tamiflu for between 1 and 2 percent of its population.

The company eased concerns a little this week when it said it was expanding its own production of the pills and would consider granting manufacturing sublicenses to any government or company seeking them. We believe the federal government, and American drug companies, should immediately seek such licensing.

If talks should fail, though, the United States should grant rights to other manufacturers anyway, as it was prepared to do with the antibiotic Cipro during the anthrax scare after 9/11. Far better having to calculate royalties owed to Roche than having to calculate how many Americans died if a pandemic did indeed strike.