Health
MSF Starts Petition against Novartis’ Legal Challenge in India
SciDev.net reports that Médecins Sans Frontières has launched a petition against the court case by Novartis against the Indian government (see previous post for details of the case). Aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is collecting signatures against a lawsuit filed by pharmaceutical company Novartis. The court case is scheduled for 29 January [...]
Ethical Pharmaceutical Collaboration: A Catch-22 for Patent Law
The Guardian is reporting that British scientists have found ways to create drugs at a fraction of the cost of big pharma’s development costs: Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College, based at Hammersmith hospital, calls their revolutionary new model “ethical pharmaceuticals”. Improvements they devise to the molecular structure of an existing, expensive [...]
Vaccine Demand Forecasting: Creating Markets and Incentives
The PSD Blog and CGD’s Global Health Policy Blog mention a Scientific American article on the need for and initiatives to forecast the demand for vaccines. The problem this work addresses is what happens in the absence of well-defined markets: Unpredictable demand creates a three-way catch-22 problem, as pointed out in a 2002 study commissioned [...]
Indian Pharma: Balancing Patent Rights and Obligations
The ICTSD is carrying an analysis of the post-TRIPS generic pharmaceutical sector in India (there is also a report on Thailand). For a mere industry analysis the report has little new to offer, as a previous report by the CDS has already offered a more extensive analysis. However, it is an extremely lucid case study [...]
Novartis Challenges Indian Patent Law
I seem to have missed this. Since May, Novartis has been involved in a legal challenge to India’s Patent Act, which was changed in 2005 to make it TRIPS compliant (see Berne Declaration release for timeline, and coverage from IPMed). The genesis of the issue is the rejection of Novartis’ patent application for its anti-cancer [...]
TRIPS-plus and Public Health
Oxfam has released a report reviewing the patent and public health landscape 5 years after the Doha Decleration, titled, Patents versus Patients. The report is clear in its conclusion, and its criticism of the USA in particular: Trade rules remain a major barrier to accessing affordable versions of patented medicines (generic medicines)…The USA, at the [...]
The Spread of Drug Resistant Tuberculosis
The developed world is getting worried about Tuberculosis. About time. TB killed an estimated 1.7 million people in 2004 (see WHO factsheet). An estimated third of the world’s population is suspected to be currently infected, with new infections every second. But if the numbers weren’t worrying enough, the fact that medicines no longer are working [...]
US Pharma Industry Report
Greg Mankiw’s blog alerted me to a report by the US Congressional Budget Office on the Pharmaceutical Industry. It is certainly worth a read, and tries really hard to appear unbiased, presenting facts from both the supporters and critics of the industry. Every now and then, however, it dismisses the criticisms too quickly. Regardless, I [...]
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