[Commons-Law] The big pharma spin on CIPIH Report

[Shishir K Jha]

Maybe of interest to many on this site.

There is mention of the Liberty Institute of India as one of the authoring
institutes of this "big pharma spin" on the CIPIH report. Does anyone know
about them? Looks like big pharma supporters are creating their "think
tanks" in India too.

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"... a quite useful document, because it is the big pharma spin on
the CIPIH report. Clearly the industry did not want to take the
lead criticizing the report, and prefer that these industry funded
NGOs do it for them. The IPN report involved a fair amount of
planning and coordination. The reference to "civil society"
organizations is of course designed to confuse the press, by making
it sound as if it is independent from pharmaceutical industry, which
is not true. Note they don't advertise themselves as a pro-free
market group funded by drug companies --  and present themselves in
the language usually used to describe the industry critics.  ...
It is interesting IPN uses John Kilama so much in this report.
This former Dupont executive spends a lot of time pushing agricultural
patents in Africa on behalf on the agricultural biotechnology industry,
and is a frequent speaker against compulsory licensing of essential
medicine patents."     James Love

> A newly released report published by 16 independent and non-
> partisan civil society organisations on the subject of IP, innovation
and > health may be of interest to ip-health readers in light of the
release,
> as covered yesterday on this list-serve, of a WHO Commission report
> addressing the same issues.
>
> An English version of the report can be accessed via the International
> Policy Network website,
> http://www.policynetwork.net/uploaded/pdf/
> Civil_Society_text_web.pdf, or

> A Spanish version of the press release can be accessed at the
> Instituto Ecuatoriano de Economía Política:
> http://www.ieep.org.ec/ieep/ieepsite/templates/articulos.aspx?
> articleid=527&zoneid=2;
>
> The report identifies 50 per cent of people in parts of Africa and
> Asia have no access to medicines due to harmful government policies.
>
> Examples of harmful government interventions found in the report are:
> Taxes and tariffs of up to 55 per cent on imported medicines price
> people out of treatment.
>
> Byzantine and costly registration requirements mean many medicines
> already approved in the US, EU and Japan are simply not registered in most
> poor countries because manufacturers cannot justify the investment in
> registration.
>
> Health insurance is hampered by government regulations, so the poor
> are unable to obtain insurance and are only able to pay for treatments
> if they have sufficient savings, or must rely on charity or meagre
> government healthcare provision.
>
> Price controls - which proponents claim benefit the poor - actually
> reduce the availability of drugs, especially in distant rural regions, by
> making it uneconomic for pharmacies to stock them. Even in relatively
> wealthy South Africa, price controls have led to the closure of scores of
> rural pharmacies - leaving thousands of poor people without any access to
> medicines at all.
>
> Inadequate protection for intellectual property in poor countries
> undermines incentives to invest in R&D for the diseases of poverty by
> making it more difficult to recover costs. The report found no
> evidence that intellectual property protection had hampered access to
> medicines.
>
> Low pay and poor conditions at government run hospitals and clinics
> mean that a large number of trained medical professionals (doctors,
> nurses, etc.) have emigrated to wealthier countries with better healthcare
> systems.
>
> The Civil Society report was motivated in part by a concern that
> the WHO's Commission on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Health,
> would not address these fundamental issues because of concerns about the
> response of member governments.
>
> Barun Mitra (Liberty Institute, India), one of the lead authors of the
> report, said:
>
> "Our report shows that, when it comes to medicines for the diseases of
> poverty, governments are the main barriers to access and innovation.
> Intellectual property is an important driver of innovation but in poor
> countries governments currently prevent people from accessing cheap,
> generic medicines that could cure many of the diseases they face.
> In such circumstance, what is the point of producing new drugs for these
> diseases? Governments must remove the taxes, tariffs and regulations that
> prevent the sick from getting treatment."
>
> ---------
>
> Alec van Gelder
> Research Fellow
> International Policy Network