Does Annan want to sponsor private AIDS-research with public-funding?
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SABC Online reported the following:
<<Annan said that he met representatives of the companies at Amster-
dam earlier this month, to prevail on them not to make the drugs the
exclusive preserve of the rich. "They now accept the need to combine
incentives for research with access to medication for the poor. They
are ready to sell drugs to those countries at greatly reduced
prices," Annan said.>>
Source:
http://www.sabcnews.com/SABCnews/world/other/0,1009,14079,00.html
The recent support of Kofi Annan for generic drugs is a great devel-
opment. However I am still puzzled why he promised to offer incen-
tives to the private sector for research using public funds? It seems
that some quite valuable public projects of AIDS-Chemistry need some
long awaited funds in Africa (see examples below). If the private
sector failed on the production of AIDS drugs for all, during the
last 15 years, why should they be rewarded with incentives to keep a
future "quasi-monopoly" on the outcome of research?
If public research results would be placed under a carefully worded
public licence (in GNU style, http://www.gnu.org), then the whole
nightmare of AIDS-drug patents would stop, and this would the best
news ever for poor people who need access to those drugs. And btw
this is a new trend all over the industry... if I look at the new Ma-
cOS X, it offers a Unix shell with the possibility of compiling Open
Source OpenGL graphics with a simple cc (no need for expensive devel-
oping tools); the world is slowly moving away from the global-hype by
using a new type of "knowledge-ecology" that is open to everyone and
to which all may contribute. MIT has launched an OpenCourseWare in-
spired from the GNU where faculty while retaining their copyright al-
low others to use it in an open fashion (http://www.mit.edu/).
It is time to translate this into reality for chemistry and drugs. It
would help if an AIDS-licence framework would be made available so
that researchers can protect their discoveries while making them open
to the whole world: in other words a world-wide public patent and/or
licence that no one can own. All we need is a nice lawyer to start
writing it so that it meets "international trade agreements".
Christian Labadie, MS
mailto:CLabadie@t-online.de
http://nucwww.chem.sunysb.edu/prevges/sida.html
--
Here are some of the papers published recently by African-based chem-
ists and biochemists; more at:
http://citation.thread.free.fr/sidaresaf/Index.html
Synthesis and Anti-HIV Activity of Different Novel Nonclassical Nu-
cleosides Elgemeie GEH; Mansour OA; Metwally NH (1999) Nucleosides &
Nucleotides 18(1):113-123
A Synthetic Strategy to a New Class of Cycloalkane Ring-Fused Pyri-
dine Nucleosides as Potential Anti-HIV Agents Elgemeie GEH; Attia
AME; Hussain BAW (1998) Nucleosides & Nucleotides 17(5):855-868
Synthesis and Biological-Activity of Modified Thiopyrimidine Nucleo-
sides Attia AM; Sallam MA; Almehdi AA; Abbasi MM (1999) Nucleosides &
Nucleotides 18(10):2307-2315
Synthesis of Some 2,3'-Anhydro and 3'-Mesyl Nucleosides Abdelmegied
AES (2000) J Chemical Res S (4):152-153
Synthesis of Acyclonucleoside Derivatives of 5-Alkoxymethyluracils
Abdelmegied AE (1998) J Chemical Res S (12):756+
The Viral Envelope in the Evolution of HIV - A Hypothetical Approach
to Inducing an Effective Immune-Response to the Virus Ngu VA (1997)
Medical Hypotheses 48(6):517-521
AIDS - Biochemical Prospectives Ghourab G (1996) Advances Clinical
Chemistry 32():167-240
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