"Orphan Drugs" for the Third World

Excerpt

In their policy discussion paper in this issue, "Orphan Drugs: Creating a Policy," Asbury and Stolley (1) direct attention to a study of drugs of limited commercial interest recently completed by an interagency task force under the aegis of the Department of Health and Human Services (formerly Health, Education, and Welfare) and to a published summary of the task force's conclusions and recommendations (2). Although the report focuses on problems with the most obvious category of "orphan drugs," drugs for rare diseases, it also briefly mentions "drugs for use in diseases endemic to the third world countries (nonpaying customers with