Knowledge Ecology International

Today I am at Harvard, attending a workshop titled: Unbranding Medicines: the politics, promise, and challenge of generic drugs. This is put on by the Harvard Interfaculty Initiative on Medicines and Society. The program in general is quite impressive, particularly as regards to the depth of experience and knowledge about the generic drug industry, including its early origins.

I was asked to speak about the use of prizes. The slides from my presentation are here:

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6 December 2008

At the close of the final day of the 3rd Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India, the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) released an agreement entitled the “Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards.”

Under the procurement agreement, governments, publicly funded and non-profit institutions agree to promote interoperability and accessibility through the use of open standards.

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The Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) convened two events during the first two days of the Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India (3-6 Dec 2008).

Workshop 21 : “Knowledge as a Global Public Good: How Fair Use, Open Source and ICT Standards Can Expand Digital Inclusion”
4:30-6:00pm, December 3, Room 5

Moderator: Malini Aisola, Knowledge Ecology International
Speakers:

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The 3rd session of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is meeting from 3-6 December 2008 in Hyderabad, India. According to the conference website, Hyderabad is

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This is from an exchange on IP-Health.

———–
Dear Aidan and Thomas.

There are several things I could mention about this revised position on compulsory licenses, but I will begin with these.

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One feature of the HIF that is raising eyebrows is their proposal to
spend $600 million *per year* on assessing health impacts. This is
apparently more than an order of magnitude greater than the entire
budget of NICE. The reference to the $600 million from the HIF book
follows:

Aidan Hollis and Thomas Pogge, The Health Impact Fund, Making New

Medicines Accessible for All, A Report of Incentives for Global Health,
2008

Page 30-32

THE COST OF HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT

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This is a comment on the references to compulsory licensing in the Hollis/Pogge HIF book that are quoted below.

https://www.keionline.org/blogs/2008/11/18/excerpts-from-hif-compulsory-licensing/
Aidan Hollis and Thomas Pogge, The Health Impact Fund, Making New Medicines Accessible for All, A Report of Incentives for Global Health, 2008.

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On November 25, 2008, I was invited to give a talk in Vienna, at the meeting of the Chamber of Commerce (the WKO). The event was organized by Eva Lichtenberger, a Green Party MEP. Eva also spoke, and gave a great talk, in German. Her slides were in English, and I’ll add them when I can. The outline of my talk is given below.

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