Millions of people, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, lack access to effective pharmaceuticals, often because they are unaffordable. The 2001 Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) adopted the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement and Public Health. The declaration recognized the implications of intellectual property rights for both new medicine development and the price of medicines.

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are a matter of great concern in drug research. This study focuses on drugs which have been banned or withdrawn, due to serious problem of adverse reactions. Our attempt is to develop insights through plotting of data on cumulative counts of ADR reports. These data have been sourced from www.vigiaccess.org. Our expectation is that once a drug is banned/withdrawn, its count of ADR reports should fall precipitously and remain there. Instead a variety of shapes is encountered.