Social Issues
The anti-test case that\'s hard to swallow
IPN Opinion article
Rather than help developing countries, these stories and their attack on pharmaceutical companies may worsen things. Media coverage has contributed to polarisation of the disagreements over drugs patents, slowing a new World Trade Organisation trade round and harming prospects for agricultural liberalisation that would help poor countries.
The current media campaign may succeed in encouraging legislation from South Africa to Mexico that will lower drug profits. However, without large profits, there will be less research and fewer drugs in the pipeline.
Europe\'s Tiny Tax Havens Have Survival Skills
IPN Opinion article
One of Brian Carney\'s winning articles for the 2003 Frederic Bastiat Prize for Journalism
World trade talks collapse
IPN Opinion article
World trade talks, taking place in Canc˙n, Mexico, have broken down due to apparently irreconcilable differences between rich and poor countries.
James Shikwati of Kenya\'s Inter-Region Economic Network told the EUobserver that despite an apparent power shift towards poorer countries, with the emergence of the so-called Group of 21, the status quo gives little reason to rejoice.
\"It\'s hard to celebrate when things have stayed the same,\" he said, \"market access is not improved, harmful subsidies remain in place, and tariffs on processed goods such as chocolate or packaged coffee have not been reduced or removed. Farmers in the developing world will continue to struggle against these trade barriers\".
Mercantilism today: how a dead philosophy comes back to life
IPN Opinion article
"Exports are good and imports bad, right? Wrong. All trade -- whether it is import or export, within nations or between them -- leads to economic growth, better jobs, and better health."
Entire intellectual property system could easily fall
IPN Opinion article
Discusses patents, compulsory licensing and trade
Banned wagon
IPN Opinion article
Unfortunately, campaigns against the disease are further hampered by the West's banning, on environmental grounds, of DDT ó a pesticide which was highly effective in stopping the spread of the disease. According to the charity Africa Fighting Malaria, the number of malaria cases has doubled in Zambia in the past decade, and increased tenfold in South Africa in the past five years ó a statistic little known in the West, because malaria isn't as fashionable a cause as Aids.
AIDS drug incentive dilemma
IPN Opinion article
According to recent reports, notably in the British Medical Journal, viral resistance is making existing AIDS drugs less effective and others totally useless. Meanwhile, the development of new AIDS drugs is in shocking decline, down by 33 percent over the past five years. The Bush administration seems to be unaware, and big pharma is unwilling to admit, that this decreased development is a nasty consequence of drug activists succeeding in their campaign to demand lower prices for AIDS drugs.
