E-drug: NGOs Say No to Poisonous Proposals on Paragraph 6
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The WTO TRIPS council is trying to finish negotiations on rules for exports
under a non-voluntary license to use a medicine patent.
Jamie
............
November 25, 2002
NGOs: Say No to Poisonous Proposals
Developing countries should walk away from the negotiations on exports of
health care products (paragraph 6), if the proposed "solution" (as reflected
in the draft of November 24, 2002) is riddled with limitations and burdens,
creates new norms for WTO intrusions into national sovereignty, and reduces
the stature and importance of the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public
Health.
NGOs believe that the US, EU, Canada, Switzerland and Japan have escalated
their efforts to make the solution more restrictive, more burdensome, and
more problematic in terms of precedent, and have demonstrated bad faith in
addressing the problems set out in paragraph 6. In other words, the solution
is not going to work. The system proposed by the rich countries is worse
than the status quo.
On some issues, such as the scope of diseases, there can be no compromise.
How can any WTO member justify the exclusion of a particular disease from
the solution? Either every country has effective and practical methods to
protect the public health and "in particular, to promote access to medicines
for all," as is called for in Paragraph of the 4 declaration, or the WTO is
a place where crude compromises on public health are hammered out disease by
disease, product by product, country by country, and patient by patient.
For information, contact:
Consumer Project on Technology, James Love (+41 79 579 6022)
M�dicins sans Fronti�res, Ellen �t Hoen (+336 223 75871)
Oxfam, Michael Bailey (+44 79 68196102)
Third World Network, Cecilia Oh (+41 76 523 1233)
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James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040
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