Roger Bate
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.
A Mexican Mistake?
IPN Opinion article
A year and a half ago in Doha, Qatar, long before it became the center of the Iraqi war effort, the war on AIDS was supposed to be re-charged by the World Trade Organization. At the Doha WTO Ministerial meeting an agreement was reached permitting poor countries to disregard patent protections for drugs designed to treat diseases that posed a special burden, an \"emergency\", on those impoverished societies. What the ministers had in mind in allowing the compulsory licensing of drugs was improving access to treatments for malaria and AIDS in countries like Benin and Botswana that have been hit hardest by disease epidemics. But instead the Doha declaration, as it is now known, has been used by mid-income countries such as Egypt and Peru for improving access to lifestyle drugs like Viagra.
When Activists Win
IPN Opinion article
Today data are released from PhRMA, the pharmaceutical lobby group, which show that AIDS drugs in development are in shocking decline, down by 33% over the past 5 years. What the industry is unwilling to admit is that drug activists have been successful in their campaign of demanding lower prices for AIDS drugs. The result is that in some drug company boardrooms, investment is obviously switching from AIDS research into areas where profits can still be made.
Calls for accountability from S Africa
IPN Opinion article
The nine-day summit is not even over but one influential environmental group has already produced a report card on the failure of the conference to deliver what they consider essential.
New Study Shows Tragic Consequences of Environmentalists' Campaign to Ban DDT
IPN Opinion article
Press release announcing publication of "Malaria and the DDT Story"
