Center for American Principles Policy Fellow Patrick Kilbride’s Op-Ed, Don’t Make Better Medicine Harder to Develop, was published in the West Haven Voice.
Kilbride highlights the important role patent protections play in encouraging continued biopharmaceutical research and development. He explains that medical innovation often continues after a medicine receives its initial FDA approval, with further research producing advances in formulations, delivery methods, manufacturing processes, dosing, and new therapeutic uses.
The Op-Ed also challenges criticisms of pharmaceutical “patent thickets” and “evergreening.” Kilbride argues that follow-on patents protect distinct innovations and do not extend the terms of earlier patents, and warns that weakening patent protections could reduce incentives for companies to undertake the costly and high-risk research necessary to develop new and improved medicines.