Essential Medicines News

Peter Kelley, “Choosing the greater good in promotion of UW intellectual properties,” University Week: University of Washington faculty and staff newspaper, 24: 11, 4 January 2007.
An advisory committee at the University of Washington has recommended that inventions developed at the university, including medicine, be licensed “to maximize the worldwide use and societal benefit” of the […]

John Carreyrou, “Inside Abbott’s Tactics to Protect AIDS Drug,” Wall Street Journal, p. A1, 3 January 3, 2007. (Subscription required.)
Previously undisclosed documents reveal drugmaker Abbott’s plan to boost sales of their AIDS drug Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir).
The plan: take out a rival treatment option that included its own drug, Norvir (ritonavir), as well as rival companies’ drugs. […]

Follow-up to Fighting hepatitis C with “ethical pharmaceuticals”
Sarah Boseley, “Big pharma’s bad karma,” commentary, Comment is Free: The Guardian blog, 2 January 2007.
Patents, argue the drug giants, are their lifeblood. They have to keep the prices of their drugs high as long as possible - at least in the rich countries - in order to […]

Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, “Drug costs imperil Brazil AIDS fight,” Boston Globe, 3 January 2007.
Brazil, the first developing country to guarantee free AIDS treatment to anyone who needs it, has faced a steep increase in recent costs. In two years, the country’s spending on AIDS drugs has increased 75 percent.
AIDS activists say that ballooning drug prices […]

Bertrand Benoit and Quentin Peel, “Merkel seeks EU-US accord,” Financial Times, 3 January 2007.
“Full text: Interview with Angela Merkel,” MSNBC, 3 January 2007.
German chancellor Angela Merkel announced she will seek closer economic cooperation between the European Union and the United States. Germany began its six-month rotation of the EU presidency this week. Merkel is also […]

The December 2006 issue of the American Political Science Association’s journal Perspectives on Politics features a suite of articles on the theme “25 Years at the Margins — The Global Politics of HIV/AIDS.”
Andrea Densham, “Introduction: Politics as a Cause and Consequence of the AIDS Pandemic,” Perspectives on Politics, 4: 4, pp. 641-646, December 2006.
The response […]

IP-NGOs project, “NGOs, Intellectual Property Rights and Multilateral Institutions,” report, 22 December 2006.
The project was directed by Duncan Matthews of Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute at Queen Mary, University of London. The report studied the activities of non-governmental organization on intellectual property issues at certain intergovernmental organizations. One of the case studies of the […]

On 16 January, the Project on Science & Intellectual Property in the Public Interest of the American Association for the Advancement of Science is hosting a symposium at the AAAS headquarters in Washington, DC. The subject is intellectual property protections and the conduct of research in the U.S. scientific community.
The symposium will address several findings […]

The World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines will meet in Geneva on 19-23 March. The committee will consider applications for additions to the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines. The list is revised biennially. Being listed carries a variety of benefits, and the list guides policymaking for many […]

Mark Sappenfield, “India poised for pharmaceutical boom,” Christian Science Monitor, 2 January 2007.
Another look at the Indian pharmaceutical industry. The article points out that India has more plants approved to make drugs for the American market than any country except the U.S. itself. However, “India is still in many ways the premier drug-provider for the […]