A researcher at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London has renewed controversy about whether poor countries are harmed by drug patents by publishing a paper in which he concluded that only 1.4 percent of medicines designated by the World Health Organisation as "essential" are protected by patents in poor nations, the Financial Times reports. After analyzing the medicines in 70 countries, Amir Attaran found that only 19 of the 319 drugs were covered by patents and that in 98.6 percent of cases, developing countries would have no trouble purchasing generic versions of the recommended drugs. Therefore, "poverty, not patents, imposes the greater limitation on access," Attaran concluded.