On Friday May 8, 2015, the US Department of Health and Human Services held a listening session to solicit input on the agenda items for the upcoming 68th World Health Assembly. KEI delivered five interventions covering a range of critical WHA topics. The full provisional agenda of the 68th WHA can be accessed here.
Yesterday (April 21,2015) the California Assembly held a Health Committee hearing to discuss various bills being offered, including Assembly Member Dan Chiu’s AB 463, titled the Pharmaceutical Cost Transparency Act of 2015.
AB 463 calls for the pharmaceutical industry to annually report its costs for developing and manufacturing a drug (for any course of treatment over $10k). The bill seeks to provide audited information on R&D costs, a topic for which the industry often makes unsupported and exaggerated claims.
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) will present the following statement on 20 April 2015 to the Open Session of the 20th Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines.
Statement of Knowledge Ecology International: WHO 20th Expert Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines, with specific focus on expanding access to new cancer drugs, when available at affordable prices
20 April 2015
Dear members of the WHO Expert Committee and the WHO secretariat,
In advance of the World Trade Organization’s October 2014 session of the TRIPS Council, the European Union, Switzerland and the United States made a written request to the TRIPS Council to discuss “Intellectual Property and Innovation: Promoting Awareness; Case Studies” under agenda item 12. This marked the 7th time that the United States tabled an item to the TRIPS Council relating to intellectual property or innovation.
In the context of these October 2014 discussions of Intellectual Property and Innovation, the Government of India delivered the following intervention asserting that,
At the February 24, 2015 USTR hearing on Special 301, KEI asked to provide supplemental comments on R&D for the record, and KEI was separately asked by USTR to provide comments on online pharmacies, and by DHHS to comment on the relationship between emergencies and compulsory licensing. (The KEI page on Special 301 is here: /ustr/special301).
On February 24, 2015, the USTR convened the Special 301 Review, taking testimony almost exclusively from witnesses representing large corporate rights holders. Over the course of the three-and-a-half hour hearing, groups such as Phrma, NAM, IPO, and the misleadingly-named Alliance for Fair Trade with India (an alliance comprised of groups such as Phrma, NAM, MPAA and many other similar groups) as well as foreign-owned multinational Bridgestone, pushed for the watch-listing of countries that fail to implement TRIPS+ measures. Continue Reading
Andrew S. Goldman is Counsel for Policy and Legal Affairs at KEI. He is an attorney licensed in Maryland and New York, and is admitted before the United States Supreme Court, and the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
The 7th Round of the negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement began Monday September 29, 2014 in the United States. This round’s paltry effort at transparency, the TTIP Stakeholder Engagement Day, was held at the suburban 4-H conference center in Chevy Chase, MD. Although the information packet for the event included public transport instructions, the location was difficult to access for any attendees without a car, and even then, parking was extremely limited. Continue Reading
KEI was asked to make a presentation on Hepatitis C, on September 30, 2014, at a lunch seminar at UNITAID. I am attaching a PDF of the slides I used, as well as an eight page memo that takes a look at the recent Gilead license. The memo on the license was last edited on September 30, 2014, and is presented as a draft that may be revised in the future.
On September 17, the House Judiciary marked up H.R. 5233, “The Trade Secret Protection Act of 2014.” The bill would create a civil right on action in federal courts for misappropriation of trade secrets, as defined in the bill. [Link to hearing, bill and transcript of markup]. Continue Reading