Andrew Jack, WHO members urged to sign Kyoto-style medical treaty, Financial Times, February 25, 2005. Excerpt: 'Countries around the world should sign up to a Kyoto-style treaty designed to boost medical innovation and affordable treatment, according to a petition submitted yesterday to the World Health Organisation by non-governmental organisations, academics and politicians. Member states should pledge to invest a percentage of their gross domestic product in medical innovation, and would be allowed to trade "credits" with others through a mechanism similar to that in the Kyoto protocol designed to reduce environmental emissions. They should also consider redirecting funding away from a traditional model based on intellectual property protection, and encourage the use of open sourcing to stimulate the sharing of information among medical researchers....The treaty is supported by organisations including the International Red Cross, Oxfam and Médecins sans Frontières, as well as leading medical researchers and intellectual property specialists....Jamie Love, head of the Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC, one of the originators of the idea, said the current emphasis placed on intellectual property protection of drug patents by the World Trade Organisation did little directly to find new cures. "The aim of this treaty is to refocus the debate away from drug prices and patents, and towards innovation and access," he said. "We want to shift more attention to the priority-setting process." '
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/25/2005 02:38:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
