Latest News:
Labor Unions, AIDS & Health Activists Expose Secret Trans-Pacific Trade Negotiations at Beverley Hills Hotel | Media Advisory
Brook K. Baker, Settlement of India/EU WTO Dispute re Seizures of In-Transit Medicines: Why thePropsed EU Border Regulation Isn't Good Enough | download doc
Brook K. Baker, Novartis: Keepings its head in the sand re the impact of its challenge to the India Patent Act | read online
Brook K. Baker, Biased IP technical assistance, judicial independence, and recusals - Novartis's attack on India Patent Act and Beyond | read online
U.S. Patent and Data Protection Proposals in Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations - A Grave Threat to Access to Medicines | download PDF
Jennifer Cohn & Brook K. Baker, Obstacles and Opportunities on the Road to Universal Access to ARVs, 7 Current HIV/AIDS Reports 161-167 (2010) | Download PDF
Brook K. Baker, ACTA: Risks of Third-Party Enforcement to Access to Medicines, 26 Am. U. Int’l L. Rev. 579-599 (2011) | Download PDF
President Obama Travels to India Bearing Broken Promises on Access to Generic AIDS Medicines | More
Comments submitted to the Government of India on Compulsory Licenses | download doc
Activists Applaud NIH Support for the Medicines Patent Pool | More
New Analysis:
ViiV Licenses vs. the Patent Pool: Unanswered Questions and Unwarranted Antipathy | more
Health GAP and 18 Other Organizations File Official Complaint to UN on Obama Trade Policies | More
Health GAP Policy Analysis: Making a Mistake on Treatment – PEPFAR’s New Five-Year AIDS Strategy
by Brook K. Baker, Feb. 5, 2010
Abstract: Just when testing trends are so positive, just when the costs of medicines have plummeted to new lows, and just as scientific modeling and research shows that treatment reduces the risk of HIV transmission, funding – the lifeblood of AIDS programming – is being capped both by donor countries and their partners in the developing world that are suffering the worst of the global recession. As a result, people are beginning to stand in line and to die in that line while waiting for treatment.
Full analysis here, or click here to download as a PDF.
Analysis of the Indian Mashelkar Committee Report on Patents
The Mashelkar Committee has misinterpreted India’s flexibility under international law to limit patents of pharmaceutical products to new chemical entities, or new medical entity involving one or more inventive steps [NCEs]. Although it has slightly modified and extended its analysis, it has made three fundamental mistakes. | More
Drug Companies' new proposals to "improve access to medicine"
Health GAP's Board co-Chair Brook Baker provides analysis on Big Pharma's new offensive to have its research on neglected diseases subsidized while still protecting and even extending intellectual property rights worldwide. Although three separate proposals, the Pogge/Hollis Health Impact Fund, the GlaxoSmithKline "Big Pharma A Catalyst for Change" proposals, and the Barton/Pfizer "New International Framework" proposal, all promise to reduce drug prices for the poorest countries and to expand research on neglected diseases , all three basically preclude robust generic competition across a broad range of medicines and seek to perpetuate ironclad patent and drug data monopolies. These crafty proposals all seek favorable publicity for Big Pharma while avoiding more fundamental challenges to an intellectual property regime that prioritizes drug company profits over life-saving access to lower-priced medicines of assured quality. In particular, they detract attention from more radical proposals that would separate incentives and markets for innovation from competitive markets that maximize access.
2007 Victories: Fewer Deaths and More Compulsory Licenses
Activists have long claimed that access to medicines campaigns set precedents that have a snowball effect. What we are now seeing, given India's victory against Novartis in the drug company's challenge to section 3d of the India Patent Act and given Thailand's highly publicized campaign to issue compulsory licenses on both AIDS and heart disease medicines, is a new wave of patent withdrawals and a growing wave of compulsory licenses. This reciprocal wave action creates a wider opening for continuing access to newer and lower costs medicines. But the promise of this opening will only be realized if more countries amend their patent acts to take advantage of the TRIPS-compliant, definitional flexibilities that India has enacted and if more countries use the TRIPS-compliant flexibilities
for issuing compulsory licenses for generic medicines that Thailand has used. | read article
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