Any country looking to emerge from economic backwater onto the vastly lucrative global stage has no choice but to play by the rules. In this day and age, that would mean the rules of the WTO, the World Trade Organization, and one of its absolutely non-negotiable rules is their specific take on intellectual property.

So, it should come as no surprise that India has finally patched a loophole in its 1970 Patent Act, throwing quite a wrench into its own $5 Billion pharmaceuticals industry.

Previously, India recognized patents, alright, but it was the process that got patented – not the product. In simple terms, a foreign company may have invented a drug and demonstrated that it worked through clinical studies, but if an Indian company could figure out a different way to manufacture it, India would issue a unique “process patent,” and the Indian concern would be ready for business.

India wasn’t ignoring intellectual property, so much as defining it differently.

There were a number of reasons India did this back in 1970, not the least of which was the high price of everything from drugs to pesticides. It was facing horrible public health problems and devastating famines. For its 1 billion citizens, all that has settled down now, yet the effects have gone well beyond India’s borders.

India now delivers its “process-patented” drugs for about 5% of what Western Europeans and Americans pay. As a result, hundreds of thousands of HIV-positive people in Africa, Asia and South America can actually take retro-virals. And it goes beyond AIDS. In a separate fractious case last year, Indian companies were stopped outright from producing a leukemia drug, which anyone can do the math on: The Indian drug was priced at $2,700 per year. The Big Pharma drug? $27,000.

As with any unpleasant compromise, a cacophony of pleas and enticements surrounded the Indian legislators as they sought to implement a workable change. Lobbyists from multinational drug companies were as plentiful as activists from global health initiatives … and therein lies the rub.

Umbraged entitlement rings hollow when the only thing at stake is money, but in this case, it appears to be rightful return on investment against the health and welfare of humanity.

That’s not apples and oranges. That’s apples and giraffes.

It’s like we live in two parallel worlds. In the world of business, it’s completely reasonable to recover expenses and make a profit. In the other world, the one in which we have a moral obligation to serve humanity with the technology we create, there is no other imperative but to get the medicine to the people who need it.

Those who argue that little has changed come off as disingenuous. New drugs must be on the market for three years before India’s drug industry can have a go at them – and then only if the original patent-holder gives permission.

To the France-based organization Doctors Without Borders, the reality is obvious: The latest drugs – our best technology – will never be available to the vast swath of humanity who is suffering, while the specter of drug resistance always abounds. Three years is more than a lifetime for people with AIDS and cancer, tuberculosis and more.

Apparently, Thailand and Brazil stand ready to take up some of the slack, but what will happen when Thailand and Brazil want to join the WTO?

Any nation with an inexpensive labor pool and a modicum of technology can manufacture a proven product for pennies on the dollar, but there will be no sea change until someone can produce the original research and safety testing for pennies, as well.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.