WHO Conflict of Interest Guidelines
WHO has kindly made available its conflict of interest guidelines. Apparently they are not available from the public web page. Attached are two documents:
A few of the many interesting provisions follow:
I. MEANING OF “CONFLICT OF INTEREST”Ska Keller tables MEP question on ethical aspects of pharmaceutical test data protection
On Tuesday the 18th of January 2010,German Green MEP Franziska Keller tabled this Parliamentary question:
European members of WHO Executive Board take hard line on nomination of Novartis official to R&D group
At the 128th meeting of the WHO Executive Board (EB), the European members of the board are reportedly taking a hard line on the proposal by Switzerland to have Paul Herrling, an executive of Novartis, appointed to the WHO Consultative Expert Working Group (CEWG) on R&D financing. Our earlier blogs on this controversy are available here and here).
US government urges WHO to support Medicines Patent Pool: Extract of US intervention on draft WHO HIV/AIDS strategy 2011–2015
On Tuesday’s discussion at the 128th Executive Board on the Draft WHO HIV/AIDS strategy 2011–2015, the United States made a strong intervention (delivered by Dr. Nils Daulaire, Director, Office of Global Health Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services) in support of the Medicines Patent Pool drawing attention to the fact that the draft HIV/AIDS strategy while making reference to a more competitive market for ARVs, failed to recognized the importance of the Medicines Patent Pool.
Here below are the remarks of the US on this point:
Conflicts of Interest, and the WHO evaluation of the FRIND and the PDP Plus funding proposals by the CEWG
This note provide additional context for those who are just now following the issue of conflicts of interest and the WHO Consultative Expert Working Group (CEWG) on R&D Financing.
The CEWG follows a controversial, flawed and failed effort by an earlier group, the WHO Expert Working Group (EWG) on R&D Financing, to:
The WHO EB debate over membership of the new R&D Financing consultative expert working group (CEWG)
At the end of the day on Monday, the 128 WHO Executive Board meeting took the agenda item for creation of a new R&D Financing consultative expert working group (CEWG). (Yesterday’s blog on this topic is here)
World Health Organization Executive Board to create new consultative expert working group on R&D Financing
Today the WHO is expected to take up the Report by the Secretariat on “the Establishment of a consultative expert working group on research and development: financing and coordination.” (link here).
Google hits by domain using search term “Gates Foundation”
The following reports the number of Google hits using the search term “gates foundation,” with a site:domainname option, on January 7, 2011. The result is a count of the number of web pages (visible to Google) mentioning the Gates Foundation on a particular domain.
For example, the google search site:who.int “gates foundation” identified 5,940 pages on the who.int web site that have the exact phrase, “gates foundation.”
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Life Technologies funds seven $1 million medical innovation prizes
On December 14, 2010, Life Technologies Corporation, which among other things owns Ion Torrent, which sells the Ion Personal Genome Machine sequencer, announced seven new medical innovation prizes. The first three prizes are related to improvements in the Ion semiconcudtor sequencing products. Each of the three sequencer prizes is funded at $1 million, and will be awarded to contestants that can achieve the following goals:
- produce twice as much sequence data,
NSF, Gates Foundation policies on sharing data and intellectual property in agricultural basic research grant program (BREAD)
The US based National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are collaborating on a program called Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development (BREAD). A May 12, 2010 NSF announcement about the program is available here. Continue Reading
