The Emperor’s New Drugs: Ethnic Niche Markets and Genomic Sovereignty After BiDil

As drug after blockbuster drug falls over the patent cliff, Big Pharma is scampering to resuscitate intellectual property by tailoring drugs to particular ethno-national populations. Companies are turning to emerging economies as their Promised Land, moving away from the blockbuster model to an ethnic niche model of drug development and marketing. But as one U.S. based investor recently lamented, Pharma’s expansion into foreign markets “has hit a roadblock: nationalism”. Researchers and policy entrepreneurs in a growing number of countries are asserting protective ownership over their national genomes, laying claim to “Mexican DNA” and “Indian DNA” among others, all within the framework of public health genomics.  This re-territorialization of biological difference, in which ethnoracial classifications in drug development are part of an empowering postcolonial response to Pharma’s empire, requires us to think anew about race and medicine. Should this new context change our critique of ethno-racially tailored drugs? What new issues of power and difference do genomic sovereignty claims give rise to? In short, what forms of critique, intervention, or solidarity do we think worthwhile when the garment worker puts on the emperor’s robes?