Essential Medicines News

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 […]

JR Minkel, “How Much AIDS Vaccine Do Poor Countries Really Want?,” Scientific American, 3 January 2007.
Sanofi-Aventis and Novartis have experienced about half the expected demand for their drugs artesunate and coartem which they have produced specifically for treatment of malaria in the developing world. This weak demand, which is inconsistent with the actual felt […]

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 […]

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 […]

Sarah Boseley, “Scientists on a mission to bring cheap drugs to the world’s poorest countries,” The Guardian, 2 January 2007.
Until recently, hepatitis C, a potentially fatal blood-borne infection that could affect as many as 500,000 people in the UK, was treated with the antiviral drug ribavirin, together with interferon.
The drugs are old enough to be […]

Peter Wonacott, “Indian Scientists Return Home as Economy Moves a Step Up,” Wall Street Journal, 14 December 2006.

India was long a virtual pariah state among Western pharmaceutical companies because it let domestic companies sell copies of foreign drugs so long as they tweaked the manufacturing process. But in early 2005 the Indian government promised to […]

Follow-up to “U.S. GAO releases report on new drug development,” 27 December 2006.
A few pieces from the mainstream press, summarizing the report and responses from politicians and industry groups:
Christopher Lee, “New Drugs Declining, Research Costs Increasing, GAO Says,” Washington Post, 20 December 2006, page A8.
Douglas Waller, “Too Little Bang for the Buck in Drug Research?,” […]

“New Drug Development,” U.S. Government Accountability Office, 17 November 2006.
The main issues of concern were the recent decline in submissions to the Food and Drug Administration, with a greater percentage of them merely modifications on existing drugs. This is occurring even as FDA approval times are decreasing; meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies have increased their funding for […]

Tara Leevy, “Intellectual property and access to medicine for the poor,” Virtual Mentor: American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, 8:834-838, December 2006.
This article discusses the “flexibilities” of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights: in particular, their effect on access to medicine for the world’s poor. The Novartis suit against India’s patent law […]

Martin Enserink, “WHO Panel Weighs Radical Ideas,” Science, 314: 1373, 1 December 2006. (Subscription required.)
Short article on reforms to be discussed at the World Health Organization’s Intergovermental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property regarding the current IP framework.
The main proposal is James Love’s “R&D Treaty” where member countries agree to spend a […]