WHO Executive Board accepts appointment of Herrling to Consultative Expert Working Group on R&D

After several days of negotiations, the 128th WHO Executive Board has accepted the nomination of Paul Herrling to the new WHO Consultative Expert Working Group on R&D Financing, despite the fact that Herrling is an executive of Novartis, and is the author of the IFPMA/Novartis/FRIND proposal and the co-author of the PDP Plus proposal, which will be considered by the CEWG.

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Nine civil society groups write WHO Executive Board about conflict of interest on WHO R&D Financing group

On January 20, 2011, 9 civil society organizations sent a letter to the WHO Executive Board registering an objection to the selection of Dr. Paul Herrling of Novartis to the WHO Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination. The groups signing the letter were:

  • CIDEPRO
  • Déclaration de Berne – Berne Declaration
  • HAI Europe
  • HAI Global
  • Health GAP (Global Access Project)
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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).

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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:

  1. produce twice as much sequence data,
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