Martin Enserink, WHO Panel Weighs Radical Ideas, Science Magazine, December 1, 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt:
Lifesaving antiretroviral drugs have been available for a decade in wealthy countries, yet millions of HIV-infected people south of the equator still can’t get them. The medicine cupboard is equally bare for people afflicted by tropical illnesses such as visceral leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness, and Chagas disease, for which there are no truly good therapies. Western medical science has not done well by the world’s poor, and some critics blame this on its reverence for intellectual property (IP). Is it time to overhaul the IP protection system? A new working group hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) will consider that question in a series of meetings beginning next week in Geneva, Switzerland....
To produce new drugs for neglected diseases, [critics] say, the world needs a new R&D system that rewards not market sales but the potential to save lives and improve health. One such framework, which the IGWG [WHO’s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property] may consider, is a hotly debated proposal for an international treaty to open up drug discovery, championed since 2002 by James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, D.C. Under Love’s “R&D Treaty,” countries would agree to spend a minimum percentage of gross domestic product on medical research, including a portion for neglected diseases. In addition, the treaty would promote open access to research findings and possibly add R&D incentives. For instance, governments could award big monetary prizes for those who invent important new medicines. Manufacturers would then be free to produce and market them cheaply....
The treaty [was] recommended in a letter to the World Health Assembly by 162 scientists, health experts, and others last year....
PS: For background see the draft treaty and 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 12/01/2006 09:23:00 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.
