E-drug: What you can do: Para 6 negotiations
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Suggestions for actions people can take to influence debate
on Doha paragraph 6 solution.
As the year runs out USTR and DG-Trade are putting immense
pressure on developing countries to accept an extremely weak
solution to paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on TRIPS --
one that not only has few benefits to developing countries
but is skillfully designed to undermine and narrow the broad
benefits of the original declaration, and which would create
a system of special supervision for patent exceptions in
developing countries. It is possible that there will be a
push to end the negotiations in the next few days, or the
negotiations may drag on for a while. Things are quite
unpredictable. Apparently nearly every developing country
delegation views the USTR/DG-Trade/Japan/Canada/Swiss
proposals as worse than no deal, but some delegations are
afraid the US and Europe will blame developing countries if
the negotiations fail, and they are also under a great deal
of bilateral pressure (particularly from US) to sign off on
a bad deal. This bilateral pressure is most problematic in
capitals, where Ministers of Trade are relatively uniformed
of the technical details. The Geneva delegates tend to be
better informed, but have to convince the home officials
that it is worth offending the US government.
There are many things that would help, and one is to
document that the weight of world opinion is against the
USTR/DG-Trade/Japan/Canada/Swiss proposals, and evidence
that developing countries would be supported at home and
abroad if they reject a bad deal. Specifically, it is
helpful if firms, NGOs, academics, experts and others can
organize various statements that oppose a bad deal on
paragraph 6. The issue is of course quite complex, so not
every group will find it easy to address some of the more
obscure issues, but there are some very obvious flaws in the
proposals that are easy for most people to understand. In
particular, the United States and Japan are now focused on
PhRMA's demands that the Doha Declaration be redefined to
only apply to a very limited number of infectious epidemics.
Put another way, the PhRMA/USTR/Japan position is that
diseases from Cancer, Asthma, Diabetes, heart disease, and
thousands of other diseases should be excluded. This would
be a huge setback, because the Doha Declaration now says
that the TRIPS "Agreement can and should be interpreted and
implemented in a manner supportive of WTO Members' right to
protect public health and, in particular, to promote access
to medicines for all." (Paragraph 4), and if a "solution"
to paragraph is framed only to apply to HIV, TB, Malaria and
similar infectious epidemics we will have accepted a
(PhRMA's) very limited definition of public health problems.
There is also a the issue of what technologies will be
included, now that the Japan/USTR/DG-Trade efforts have
produced a draft that excludes vaccines, an astonishingly
bad decision from a public health point of view.
These letters or statements can be fairly short, and can
focus on only a few issues. Actually, shorter letters are
often more likely to be read. A single paragraph is
sufficient, with signatures. Organize your own community,
write something from your own NGO or firm, or a group of
academics, whatever is possible would be helpful right now.
Then have someone send a copy of the letter to ip-
health@lists.essential.org or mpalmedo@cptech.org, so it can
be shared with the list and the delegates, and linked to our
web page on this, which is at
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wto/p6
Here are a few talking points:
1. There should be no compromise on the scope of diseases.
Paragraph 4 of the Doha Declaration says: "the [TRIPS]
Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a
manner supportive of WTO Members' right to protect public
health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all."
It is ridiculous to limit the definition of public health problems to
a handful of disease.
2. The solution should not exclude vaccines or important medicine devices.
3. The solution should not be limited in terms of countries that can
import or export products for public health problems, recognizing
that the use of compulsory licensing has been limited.
4. The solution should not be protectionist (prohibiting developing
countries from supplying medicines to rich countries in cases where
the rich countries issue a compulsory licensing, and should allow
every country to have the same opportunities to address abuses of
patent rights, regardless of how large or small its domestic market
is.
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040
James Love <james.love@cptech.org>
[James Love has provided a partial but long list From the Yahoo
directory of web pages on diseases, that PhRMA seeks to exclude from
the paragraph 6 solution. Please contact e-drug if you would like a
copy of the list sent directly to you. BS, moderator]
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