The most favorable explanation for what is going on this week in Geneva is that Hillary Clinton and Obama are not following what key Bush hold-overs are about to do. The less favorable explanation is that Secretaries Clinton (State) and Sebelius (HHS) and the Obama White House are closely working with PhRMA to kill any further discussions of a medical R&D treaty at the WHO.
The medical R&D treaty has been discussed by many governments at the WHO, and supported by a very long list of health, consumer and development NGOs, including MSF, Oxfam, Health Action International, HealthGap, the 80 member TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue, Knowledge Ecology International, Essential Action, and others. (See earlier expressions of support here, here, here, and here).
At present, the United States government is the leading source of government funded medical R&D, through agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. In both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP, no other country comes close....
The efforts to discuss new trade and business models for R&D [in the treaty negotiations] have delighted public health groups, but alarmed PhRMA....
The U.S. position has now been incorporated in a draft resolution....
The deal the US has pushed is to force developing countries to choose between (a) the medical R&D treaty or (b) the ability of the WHO to look at other intellectual property issues relating to access to medicines. Basically the US delegation has conceded that it cannot block all efforts to deal with access to medicines, but it wants to stop any discussions that would be more transformative, in terms of trade or business models for medical R&D, that are opposed by PhRMA.
For context about what a medical R&D treaty might do, consider this recent proposal by four countries for possible topics: ...
5. Global norms and best practices to facilitate access to government funded research....
9. Norms promoting the management of intellectual property rights in a manner that reconciles the public interest in access to knowledge and health-related innovation, including the R&D needs of developing countries....
PS: For background see the draft treaty from February 2005 and our past posts on it. (Disclosure: I signed the letter of submission and helped draft the treaty's OA provision, §13.1, which would mandate OA to publicly-funded research.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/22/2009 02:17:00 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.
