William New, Medical R&D Treaty Debated At World Health Assembly, IP Watch, May 30, 2005. Excerpt: 'Experts attending the U.N. World Health Assembly this month debated a proposal to create an international treaty on medical research and development aimed at making medical treatment affordable globally while ensuring continuing innovation in the area. The proposed treaty was created in consultation with a variety of non-governmental and government experts, and in February, 162 politicians, academics and non-governmental organisations called on the World Health Organisation to consider the proposal. The treaty was discussed at a Consumers International briefing in Geneva on 19 May. "This is an attempt to look at this issue from the public health point of view instead of the commercial point of view," said James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology (a Consumers International member), and an architect of the proposed treaty....Dr. Tim Hubbard, head of human genome analysis at the The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and another treaty architect, emphasized that researchers have recognised the advantage of access to scientific research through the Internet, although he noted that "openness isn't just giving things away for free." But Hubbard said that the argument for patents on data has diminished even while patents are being filed by scientists more than ever. Hubbard added in a statement that "people are dying needlessly because of economic dogma."'
(PS: The treaty has a provision mandating OA to publicly-funded research. See Draft 4, Section 13.1. Disclosure: I am one of the drafters.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/31/2005 01:49:00 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.
