This morning the 62nd session World Health Assembly agreed to a resolution on public health, innovation and intellectual property that, among other things, settled outstanding issues regarding the “stakeholders” for various parts of the Global Strategy and Plan of Action. (GS/PoA). With regard to the issue of a possible medical R&D treaty, the outcome of the negotiation was something of a split decision. On the one hand, the WHA agreed that the WHO would not be a stakeholder, in terms of the specific element of the WHO Global Strategy document. On the other hand, it was also agreed that the proposal for an R&D treaty would legitimately be considered by the WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing (EWG), that is reporting to the WHA in 2010, and that any country could present a proposal for discussions on an R&D treaty at any future meeting on the WHA or WHO Executive Board (EB). So the R&D Treaty is out, but it is in the EWG, and it might be back at the WHA next year....
In the views of many NGOs, government negotiators and WHO staff, this was an absurd result. If discussions on a medical R&D treaty are supposed to take place, why would the WHO be excluded from the discussions? What does this say about the WHO? What does it mean for the future of an R&D treaty?
The primary opposition to the medical R&D treaty is coming from the pharmaceutical industry, which does not like where the conversation is headed, with demands for more transparency, ethical norms for research, and attention to priority setting and accessibility of products. (See, for example, the proposals here) The pharmaceutical industry also sees a medical R&D treaty as something that competes for policy space and paradigm framing with treaties and agreements that focus on strong IPR.
There is also opposition from some high income countries that fear new obligations to pay for R&D for priority projects, such as for treatments for neglected diseases, new antibiotics, open databases or materials libraries for medical research, or other public health priorities and public goods.
The debate this week showed how willing the WHO Secretariat is, under Dr. Chan’s leadership, to bow to pressure from the pharmaceutical companies and the US and the European Union.
Whether or not this is a victory or a defeat for the treaty opponents remains to be seen. Clearly it is a setback to remove the WHO as a stakeholder. But now that the treaty has become “forbidden” fruit, more countries and NGOs are interested, and in some unexpected ways, the debate about an R&D treaty may have moved forward. For example, today some countries have already indicated an interest in revisiting the issue at the January 2010 WHO Executive Board (EB) meeting, or pushing for a treaty in the EWG, and there is likely to be a more detailed review of the policy inside the Obama Administration, which was surprised by the controversy....
PS: Also see our past posts on the Medical R&D Treaty and especially our post from last Friday on recent US efforts to kill it. Note that the draft treaty includes a provision, §13.1, which would mandate OA to publicly-funded research.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/24/2009 11:35:00 AM.
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.
