[Ip-health] SciDevNet: Universities urged: 'share benefits of health research'

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

<SNIP>

Graham Dutfield of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research
Institute, United Kingdom, welcomed the news, but said university
boards would have to accept the statement for it to have any clout.
Even this, however, would not guarantee that industries would follow
suit.

"It will be some time before industry is persuaded to go so far as to
change the current business model, which involves aggressive assertion
of intellectual property rights, and we should not hold our collective
breaths on them ever doing so," he warned.
The petition's signatories include Justice Edwin Cameron of the South
African Supreme Court of Appeal; Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute
at Columbia University, United States; former director of the WHO's
HIV/AIDS department, Jim Kim; and Jonathan Quick, who formerly directed
essential drugs and medicines policy at the WHO.

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Universities urged: 'share benefits of health research'


Eva Tallaksen
17 November 2006
Source: SciDev.Net

Prominent scientists have joined forces with a group of students to
urge the World Health Organization (WHO) to include in its global
strategies how universities can ensure health research benefits
developing countries.

Submitted this week (15 November), their petition =97 the Philadelphia
Consensus Statement =97 outlines how universities can improve access to
medicines and transfer of knowledge to the developing world by changing
their licensing policies and intellectual property (IP) rights.

Some 80 top law, science and global health experts =97 including four
Nobel laureates =97 as well as 150 students have signed the petition.

It is unique in seeking to spur universities, rather than companies or
governments, into taking action, says Dave Chokshi, a medical student
at the US-based University of Pennsylvania.

"Universities respond to a different set of incentives than other
institutions and therefore we believe our approach is novel and
promising," says Chokshi, who is a member of the Universities Allied
for Essential Medicines, a student group active at over 30
universities, which led the initiative.

The petition lays out specific proposals on how universities can
improve access to the fruits of this research by such measures as
granting rights to companies to manufacture and export generic versions
of new drugs to developing countries, price reductions, and lifting of
patent requirements.

It also specifies how to improve research on neglected diseases by
engaging with public-private partnerships or institutions in developing
countries, creating new opportunities for drug development, and carving
out exemptions for research in university patents or licences.

Each year, 10 million people die from diseases that are treatable with
existing drugs, according to the WHO.

More than half of all pharmaceutical innovations in the United States
come from universities, making them a key place to address issues of
access to medicines and research into neglected diseases.

"The current IP system isn't working for the majority of the world,"
says signatory David Mayne, professor emeritus in engineering control
theory at the UK-based Imperial College London.

He told SciDev.Net that governments should give universities incentives
to adopt the statement. "If universities could change, they could make
quite a big difference."

Graham Dutfield of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research
Institute, United Kingdom, welcomed the news, but said university
boards would have to accept the statement for it to have any clout.
Even this, however, would not guarantee that industries would follow
suit.

"It will be some time before industry is persuaded to go so far as to
change the current business model, which involves aggressive assertion
of intellectual property rights, and we should not hold our collective
breaths on them ever doing so," he warned.
The petition's signatories include Justice Edwin Cameron of the South
African Supreme Court of Appeal; Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute
at Columbia University, United States; former director of the WHO's
HIV/AIDS department, Jim Kim; and Jonathan Quick, who formerly directed
essential drugs and medicines policy at the WHO.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
CPTech
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@cptech.org