Last Thursday the Energy and Commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing entitled, “A Tangle of Trade Barriers: How India’s Industrial Policy is Hurting US Companies.” The hearing is part of a recent big business push which aims to support specific industry complaints against India by lumping them together, in order to claim that India is generally flouting international rules. The strategy could benefit Big Pharma by diverting attention away from access to medicines concerns.
We distributed a two-pager which references WTO rules and responds in brief form to some of the specific patent and pharmaceutical-related complaints that seem to be circulating on Capitol Hill, a few of which were raised in a pre-hearing memo circulated by the Republican majority. The Public Citizen two-pager, “India’s Patent System Plays by WTO Rules and Supports Global Health,” is available here: tinyurl.com/nm3pc6l.
Thank you to Adriana Benedict and the PC staff for your work on this.
The testimony of hearing witnesses, which included representatives from Pfizer and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as Rohit Malpani of MSF, are available here.
Zach Carter wrote this article for Huffington Post.
