Are big pharma's profits from patenting genetic research justified?
| 18:59 UK time, Thursday, 3 June 2010
On 91Èȱ¬ World Update on Friday, we'll hear from the Nobel prizewinning geneticist , who is deeply upset at the way pharmaceutical companies are patenting the genetic information they are getting from their research so they can profit from new therapies.
In answer to the claim from the drugs companies that they need to make profits to fund further research, he insists that only 15 percent of their profits are ploughed back into R&D. But the high prices they charge for their patented medicine make life saving therapy inaccessible to the sick in developing countries where the need is greatest.
Join me, Dan Damon, for World Update at 9GMT, 5 Eastern in the US and lunchtime in East Africa, to hear Sir John's robust disapproval of the big pharmaceutical companies, and give us your comments here, so I can read some of them out on the programme.
And get more of our Hay Festival interviews here
