What's Happening

By Lydia Kuykendal,
Mercy Investment Services

Drug costs in the United States remain one of the main reasons Americans have the world’s most expensive health care. Intellectual property protections on branded drugs play an important role in maintaining high prices and impeding widescale access to medicine. 

Intellectual property describes the rights to creative and intellectual efforts and includes copyright, designs, patents, and trademarks. In the pharmaceutical industry, this often involves patents that cover manufacturing processes, dosing regimens, and product formulations.  

When patent protection on a drug ends, generic manufacturers can enter the market with a lower-priced formulation that generally results in increased access to the consumer. For this reason, branded drug manufacturers often deploy a variety of strategies to delay generic competition and extend their exclusivity periods. 

This year, the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ shareholder resolution at pharmaceutical companies addresses a major factor in these costs: the pharmaceutical industry’s patent practices – specifically, patent thickets. 

Patent thickets are the practice of applying for and amassing multiple patents on a single product. Pharma companies create these thickets of dozens to even more than 100 patents around a single product to intimidate and sue their potential competitors out of the market. This lack of market competition raises prices, with U.S. prices for branded drugs nearly 3.5 times higher than in 32 member countries of the Organizations for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  

The cost makes many prescriptions unaffordable, and nearly 1 in 3 Americans has opted not to fill a prescription – or to split pills, ration doses, or take an over-the-counter drug instead – because of the cost. This pricing structure is devastating to patients who rely on these medicines. In some cases, their lives depend on access to these medicines. 

Sister, Judy Byron, OP

“Members of Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) have been engaging the pharma sector for decades to advocate for changes in policies and practices that will increase the access and affordability of medicines,” said Sister Judy Byron, OP, of the Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment, which led the filing of the proposal at Gilead Sciences. Gilead manufactures medications used to treat COVID-19, HIV, cancers, and more. “These patent practices erect barriers to access that clearly prioritize company profits over people's health. As shareholders, we view this as fundamentally at odds with the purported missions of our companies.”  

This resolution asks four pharmaceutical companies to explain how their patenting strategies impact patient access and to enhance their disclosures of the relationship between patents and patient access. We seek to understand whether companies consider access and affordability when applying for additional patents on a product. 

The resolution received significant shareholder support at Pfizer (30.2%) and moderate support at Gilead Sciences (16.5%), Johnson & Johnson (14.4%), and Eli Lilly (10.4%). The Portfolio Advisory Board will continue to use these shareholder votes to push companies to ensure access and affordability of their products.

May 30, 2023, Adrian, Michigan – Eight students from Barry University in Miami and one from Siena Heights University in Adrian began their summer with an intense week of learning outside of the classroom: as participants of the Environmental Leadership Experience. (ELE). 

“It’s a new experience,” said Barry University sophomore Sierra Johnson, a marketing and graphic design major. “Being born in Miami and being the youngest of three, I never really had a chance to go out or experience the world.” She and her colleagues explored this new world together during the week of May 7-13, 2023, accompanied by two faculty members from Barry University.

Participants came together to “learn about sustainable agricultural ecosystems,” explained Sister Corinne Sanders, OP, General Councilor and former Director of the Office of Sustainability. “Through the lens of environmental stewardship, the program [offers] hands-on activities on the Adrian Campus and Permaculture Gardens.”

Begun in 2017, ELE made a comeback this summer after years of absence enforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. ELE is a collaborative effort of the universities and the Motherhouse Office of Sustainability.

Students create a rain garden next to the parking lot of Weber Retreat and Conference Center.

Activities included a tour of the Motherhouse grounds and the Permaculture Garden and work in the Reflective Garden at the Dominican Life Center. But the students spent a major portion of their time building a two-basin rain garden next to the parking lot of Weber Retreat and Conference Center. Along with serving as a pathway to the labyrinth and Cosmic Walk behind Weber Center, the garden was built “as a means of mitigating the degradation caused by rainwater and snow melt coming from the higher ground,” Sister Corinne explained.

The students rounded out their experience with a tour of the Detroit River, a visit to nearby Hidden Lake Gardens, dinner at a nearby restaurant, and a presentation to the Sisters of their experience at the Motherhouse. 

For Anita Zavodska, Professor of Biology at Barry University, the experience in Adrian was a renewal of an enjoyable time in 2019. This year’s experience is “just as wonderful” as in 2019, she said. “We have another wonderful group of students who are really willing to get their hands dirty and work and make a difference,” she said. “It’s like coming home.”   

For the students, ELE was not only a new experience of planting seeds in the Motherhouse grounds, but of planting them in their own hearts as well. 

“I’ve always wanted to work for the environment,” said Lily Hernandez, a Barry student majoring in biology. As a member of Barry’s Green Team, she hopes to incorporate what she learned through ELE into work at Barry. Yet, as she considers a career as a doctor, she hopes to go beyond her time in college. “Everybody could use [this experience] and be a little more sustainable, whatever you’re going into – being more sustainable, loving Earth,” she said.  

Benny Rubinsztejn, a history major at Barry University and a native of Brazil, hopes to begin a second career after 25 years as a stockbroker. 

ELE “is like a highway that works both ways, because students learn something new and bring it home,” Benny said. He sees ELE as important not only because of the environmental impact but also because of the impact on human society, at a time of great division and polarity. When people work together on a project such as the rain garden, he said, “you can build some bridges to [other] people so they respect each other. That’s the most important thing right now.” 

Both Lily and Sierra were inspired not only by their work through ELE but also by the different vegetation and wildlife they experienced in Michigan. “This week in Michigan continuously reminds us of how important it is to take a moment to appreciate all that we have and all that God has given us,” Sierra wrote in a blog organized by the ELE students.

Read the students’ entries in the blog, and watch a video of the experience below.