[MPWG] proposed Kyoto-style treaty on medicine and IPRs

[Cafesombra at aol.com]

forwarded from Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health Open Discussion Forum
*********************
Today's Financial Times has an article by Andrew Jack on the request by 162 leading scientists, public health experts, NGOs, academics, members of parliaments, government officials and others, asking WHO to evaluate a proposal for a treaty for medical R&D.  The letter is on the CIPIH web site at this address: 
http://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/submissions/en/CPTech.pdf, and also is available in French and Spanish, along with the actual text of the proposed treaty (also in three languages) here:
http://www.cptech.org/workingdrafts/rndtreaty.html

The proposed treaty addresses the major trade issues concerning medicine, and is an alternative pardigm that could replace TRIPS or various TRIPS plus trade agreements on intellectual property or drug prices, for the covered products.  The proposal requires every member country to support medical R&D to a fraction of its GDP, but is flexiable on the mechanisms that would qualify, including not only incentives for R&D from intellectual property protection or high drug prices, but also from public sector R&D, or new open source development efforts.  The treaty deals with a wide range of issues, including priority setting, the preservation and dissemination of traditional medical knowledge, technology transfer and capacity building, and the creation of public goods, such as open scientific databases like the Human Genome or the HapMap project.  It proposes a new system of "Kyoto-style" credits that researchers/companies/countries could earn by investing in projects of particular priorty need or public interest.

This is the URL and the text of the FT article. 

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/67e10ff8-86d4-11d9-8075-00000e2511c8.html

WHO members urged to sign Kyoto-style medical treaty 
By Andrew Jack in London
Published: February 25 2005 02:00 | Last updated: February 25 2005 02:00

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 letter, which draws on a draft medical research and development treaty drawn up over the past two years, is part of a broader debate on how to boost innovative research and development at a time when the "pipelines" of new medicines of the large pharmaceutical groups have been drying up.

It is also designed to address concerns that the current system does not have the incentives to encourage research into finding treatments for many "neglected diseases" in the developing world, which affect millions of people with only modest means to pay for medicines.

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.

Those involved in the lobbying effort are discussing an initiative by member countries within the WHO to raise the issue at the World Health Assembly in May.

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."

He said large pharmaceutical companies opposed the idea of the research and development treaty.