Posts Tagged: "UN Secretary General"

State Department, Universities Blast UN Attack on Patents

If the UN Secretary General and the members of his “High Level Panel on Access to Medicines” thought the State Department was bluffing when it warned against their attempt to make intellectual property the fall guy for the lack of health care in poor countries, they were rudely awakened Friday afternoon. Disdaining diplomatic niceties, less than two days after the UN report issued, State bluntly replied in a statement titled “U.S. Disappointed Over Fundamentally Flawed Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines.” Compounding the pain, the same day five prominent university associations issued a joint paper taking the report apart. Being directly and publicly rebuked in this manner is a new experience for the Secretary General and his minions– but one they richly deserve.

Are Patents the Reason Poor Countries Lack Healthcare?

A consistent charge against the patent system is that it denies the poor access to critical medicines. This belief led the UN Secretary General to launch his High Level Panel on Access to Medicines that is supported by groups like Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM)… As to UN Secretary General’s claim of a “policy incoherence” between IP rights and access to medicines, without the patent system there will be a lot fewer drugs to access here or abroad. That’s a thought he might ponder.