Paul Michel at the Orlando Sentinel reports:

In America and across the globe, about 7,000 new medicines are in development. There's no question that many of them will save lives. Unfortunately, the United Nations is working to degrade the innovation ecosystem that makes such breakthroughs possible.

In 2015, UN officials convened a powerful new panel to study ways to improve impoverished countries' access to lifesaving medicines. By all indications, that panel will soon push to weaken intellectual property protections on medicines.

That would be a huge mistake. Such a policy shift would surely slow and possibly stop the creation of new diagnostic tests and drugs, depriving patients all over the world of treatments like immune therapies and gene editing — the biggest medical breakthroughs in a century.

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