As misleading as it is when drug companies say they use R&D costs, therapeutic value, or “market forces” when they set the initial price of new medicines, Big Pharma is equally duplicitous when talking about their repetitive price increases on existing medicines via their direct and indirect references to ordinary inflation rates and the consumer price index.
Read More[Brook Baker] Once again the U.S. is unbelievably duplicitous in its 2018 Special 301 Report on permissible uses of compulsory and government use licenses by its trading partners, including most recently Colombia and Malaysia where it is announcing out-of-cycle reviews. On the one hand, the USTR pays lip service to the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, saying that “the United States respects a trading partner’s right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all” (p. 33) and that it supports use of the so-called Paragraph 6 compulsory licensing system (p. 34), which has only been used once in 15 years. However, it has withdrawn a statement in its 2017 Special 301 Report that “the United States respects its trading partners’ rights to grant compulsory licenses in a manner consistent with the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement and the Doha Declaration … ” On the other hand, the U.S. issued a broadside assault on the actual issuance of, or even discussion of compulsory licenses in a Report replete with lies, distortions, and false promises.
Read MoreFor the past 20 years in its annual Special 301 Reports, the US has consistently criticized countries that do not have compulsory licensing standards that Big Pharma likes, that threaten to issue compulsory licenses, or that have actually had the temerity to issue a compulsory license… Despite its many complaints, veiled threats, and backroom maneuvers against compulsory licenses, the USTR’s bark has been much, much louder than it’s bite.
Read MoreSupreme Court Adopts Wink-Wink Patent Utility Rule In a stunning reversal of policy, on June 30, 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned decades of precedent making it easier for the biopharmaceutical industry to gain...
Read MoreAbstract: In 2000, my colleague Yousuf Vawda and I became active in the global campaign to address intellectual property rights (IPRs), human rights, and barriers to access to affordable medicines for treating HIV and AIDS in...
Read MoreJoint submission authored by Yousuf Vawda, Andrew Rens, Andrew Rens, Brook Baker, Tobias Schonwetter, and Achal Prabhala; and co-submitted by 44 other academics, experts, scholars and advocates. The full submission is available...
Read MoreBaker BK (2016) Trans-Pacific Partnership Provisions in Intellectual Property, Transparency, and Investment Chapters Threaten Access to Medicines in the US and Elsewhere. PLoS Med 13(3): e1001970....
Read MoreU.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Hearing, Dec. 8, 2015 Written Submission from Health GAP (Also available as a PDF) In its issue analysis paper, the Committee on Ways and Means posed three basic questions...
Read MoreAfter five years of secret negotiations directed and controlled by pharmaceutical lobbyists and drug-company-dominated trade advisory groups, the official text of the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiated by the Obama...
Read MoreIn November of 2001, at the height of the global AIDS pandemic, every WTO member country in the world, including the United States, voted unanimously in the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health that...
Read MoreBrook K. Baker and Katrina Geddes Abstract: Despite the deep irony of free trade agreements being subverted to codify and extend anti-competitive monopoly rights and despite the equally deep irony of foreign investors having...
Read MoreEarlier this year, WTO Least Developed Country Members requested an unconditional extension of the expiring WTO TRIPS transition period that exempts them from having to implement pharmaceutical patents and other intellectual...
Read MoreAfter a long campaign by right-to-health activists and TPP partners, it appears that the U.S. has finally dropped its efforts in TPP negotiations to require patent coverage for new forms of known products that lack evidence of...
Read MoreThe NGO delegation to the Board of UNITAID offers its strong support for the proposal of WTO least developed country Members to extend the transition period for enforcing protections for pharmaceutical related patents and...
Read MoreLDCs Members have submitted a duly motivated request for an unconditional extension of the 2002-2016 pharmaceutical transition period (covering patents and data) and for relief from the requirements of TRIPS Article 70.8 and...
Read More[Cross posted from Equilibri.net] U.S. business interests and government officials are trying to sell the idea that heightened intellectual property protections in India are essential to foreign investment, innovation, and...
Read MoreGilead has just released the text of its hepatitis C license. Although there has been some praise for Gilead offering expanded generic access in 91 countries where over 100 million people living with hepatitis C live, there has...
Read MoreGilead has been busy building positive publicity for its proposed license on two new direct-acting oral antivirals used to treat infections with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), sofosbuvir (Sovaldi®) and ledipasvir, that will allow...
Read MoreMédecins Sans Frontières has obtained an important but long-delayed victory in a a challenge to the refusal of the Medicines Control Council in South Africa to issue section 21 permission allowing the temporary importation and...
Read MoreMark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund has written an email responding to a letter from 220 civil society organizations demanding that the Global Fund abandon its “tiered-pricing” proposal. His response:...
Read More
Comments on: Civil Society Documents Comments on: industry | infojustice