E-DRUG: AIDS drugs and Developing Countries (cont)
--------------------------------------------------
Fourth, the U.S. should immediately license to the WHO all of the HIV/AIDS
drugs that have been developed with government funding and for which the
U.S. government holds patent or other intellectual property rights.
Existing law permits Washington to take such steps. With a license, the
WHO could contract with private generic makers to produce the medicines
and distribute them widely in the developing world. Since many of the
most important HIV/AIDS remedies--such as ddI--were developed with
significant U.S. government funding, the U.S. government controls rights
to many important HIV/AIDS treatment pharmaceuticals.
It would seem your fourth point would probably go a very long way to
resolving most of the issues, and would require no significant "up front"
costs to anyone. Great suggestion, and I hope someone can move this
forward.
Thanks,
Tom
-- Thomas A. Poe, M.D., Director
The World Center For Clinical Research
2044 Plumas Street Reno, NV 89509-3708
Phone: 775-829-1799
admin@worldccr.org http://worldccr.org
--
[WHO will need to respond to this discussion, as I am not sure how
effective WHO is in handling these type of licences.
There is a precedent: 3 years ago Hoechst Marion Roussel took over Merell
Dow, which had developed Eflornithine, an essential drug for stage 2
treatment of African Sleeping Sickness. HMR did not want to produce it, and
gave the commercial rights for the production of eflornithine to WHO. WHO
was unable to use the licence, or finance the production of this essential
drug. It is only due to the efforts of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors
without borders) who bought a complete batch production that Ilex
Laboratories in Texas (USA) are now producing eflornithine again.
There is maybe no need to wait for WHO: DDI and some other
anti-retrovirals, developed by the National Institute of Health with USA
government funding, have not patented in all countries worldwide, so there
are possibilities for generic drug companies to produce it legally. WB]
--
Send mail for the `E-Drug' conference to `e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.
Mail administrative requests to `majordomo@usa.healthnet.org'.
For additional assistance, send mail to: `owner-e-drug@usa.healthnet.org'.