Essential Medicines News

I will not be posting through 14 January as I attend the National Conference on Media Reform. Other contributors may continue to post through the weekend, and I’ll try to catch up on the 14th and 15th.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that a company could sue to challenge the validity of a patent at the same time it licensed that patent. The ruling in MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc. overturns the decisions of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which had upheld the decision of a lower court […]

James Love, “The high prices we pay for government funded inventions,” Huffington Post, 9 January 2007.
“Re: Federal Procurement of Patented Drugs under Statutory Licenses,” letter to Office of Management and Budget, Essential Inventions, 5 January 2007.
In the United States, the Bayh-Dole Act allowed recipients of federal government research grants to retain intellectual property rights on […]

“UK PubMed Central launched today,” press release, Joint Information Systems Committee, 8 January 2007.
Peter Suber, “UKPMC and a handful of OA mandates,” Open Access News, 8 January 2007.
Modeled on the American PubMedCentral, UK PubMedCentral will be a repository for biomedical research. The repository is supported by a group of nine government and charitable research funders.
As […]

Christine Gorman, “Name That Life Saver!,” Time Global Health Blog, 8 January 2007.
A round-up of recent medical Web 2.0 projects, including Connotea, Public Library of Science, the New England Journal of Medicine’s beta projects, and a British Medical Journal vote on the most important medical advance since 1840.

Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, “Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation,” Los Angeles Times, 7 January 2007.
A Times investigation reveals the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable endowment and a major donor on global health issues, has billions of dollars of investments in unsavory companies. These companies, according to the piece, […]

On 4 January, the 110th Congress convened. It looks like we don’t yet have official confirmation of the membership of all committees, but we do have the chairs and ranking members of House committees. A selection of relevant panels follows.
Additionally, the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act was introduced as H.R. 4. Part of the […]

Orin Levine and Michael J. Klag, “Vaccines for the vulnerable around the world,” op-ed, The Baltimore Sun, 3 January 2007.
Each year, 2 million to 3 million children in developing countries, mainly in Africa, die from diseases that could be prevented by vaccines available today. …
A major roadblock to developing and deploying vaccines that prevent such […]

Elisabeth Rosenthal, “At WHO, a chief cut from Hong Kong cloth,” International Herald Tribune, 5 January 2007.
A profile of Margaret Chan, who assumed the position of World Health Organization director-general on 4 January.
Chan knows that she faces enormous challenges. Last year, WHO announced that it would take a more active role in ensuring that expensive […]

“Undermining TRIPS: protectionism at its worst,” editorial, The Lancet, 369: 9555, p. 2, 6 January 2007. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60003-8. (Registration required.)
The editorial discusses Novartis’ suit against the Indian government, challenging Indian patent law, and the U.S. pressure on Thailand not to grant a compulsory license for the AIDS drug efavirenz.
Two international campaigns are currently defending the […]