The rights of intellectual property owners are often protected over the common interests of the world and its population. Many believe that protecting the exclusivity of patents in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries is paramount to continued research investments. Sharing patents can be crucial, however, especially where various patented technologies are used to create a product, as in medicine. Accoring to the Biotechnology Law Report  (2008),  “The International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property released a report, 7 years in the writing, concluding that the present intellectual property system is interfering with innovation, especially in biotechnology, medicine, and the life sciences." This is not the only evidence that intellectual property protection has had negative consequences. Due to the industry's focus is on creating profitable products for developed countries, namely the United States, the needs of developing countries remain neglected, with dire consequences.  Unable to obtain and afford the cost of treatment, people throughout the world continue to die of common illnesses (e.g. lower respiratory illness and diarrhea) and diseases (e.g. measles and malaria), which are easily controlled in the developed world by vaccines and other drugs.  While AIDS has become treatable in developed countries, it remains the number one killer in developing countries, according to the University of California's Atlas of Global Inequality Consequently, countries like India and Thailand permit the development of generic drugs, copies of drugs people need, but cannot afford.  They go on to market those drugs to other developing countries.  There are others who seek to circumvent intellectual property laws for the betterment of the world's least privileged inhabitants, for example, the Institute for OneWorld Health, founded in 2000. According to founder Victoria G. Hale, the plan was to “find promising potential candidate medicines in areas of great unmet medical need; partner with the right experts and institutions to take these medicines through development, clinical trials, and regulatory approval; and finally, deliver safe, effective, and affordable medicines to the patients who need them.” Given the generous financial support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, collaborations with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the University of California Santa Barbara, and the cooperation of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, the IOWH continues to be successful in it’s quest to provide assistance to the world’s most vulnerable.  Strict enforcement of IP laws might prevent such extraordinary interventions. 

There are other intellectual property issues involving medical intervention that have not gone well.  According to Professor Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, as scientists worked on the genome project, the biopharmaceutical company Myriad Genetics quickly patented a genetic test used for early detection of breast cancer; consequently, the cost of the test is five times higher than original estimates.  Another tragic human effect of intellectual property restrictions were the thousands of Indian farmer suicides due to failed crops in 2006.  Farmers grew and planted their own seeds until the government and international aid donors encouraged them to buy hybrid seeds produced by Monsanto, an agricultural company based in St. Louis, Missouri.   These hybrid seeds presented several problems for the farmers.  Worst among them was the prohibition of gathering the patented seeds for the next year's crop, mandating that farmers buy new seeds every year, including royalties to Monsanto.  

In 1991, Australian geneticist Richard Jefferson, in an effort to address these and future IP calamities, established CAMBIA, "a non-profit research institute whose mission is to make often proprietary technology more widely available."  He states, “the real issue is the contribution that wise use of biotechnology can make to global health and nutrition – if we free up access to the tools for the people who really need them.”  Intellectual property rights protect the owner, but at what cost?  Nowhere are IP rights more controversial than in situations where lives are lost.  Wired Magazine calls CAMBIA “a force in agricultural technology," and dubs intellectual property “a legal regime that has become so stifling and restrictive that thousands of free-thinking programmers, scientists, designers, engineers, and scholars are desperate to find new ways to create.”