Contrast in privilege: US officials working to block WTO LDC drug patent waiver, and people affected by policy

On the left, the people in the Obama Administration trying to block a permanent waiver of WTO drug patent obligations for Least Developed Countries (as defined by the UN). On the right, some people living in least developed countries.

Ambassador Michael Forman. Head of USTR. Alma maters: Princeton, Oxford and Harvard Law. Formerly ran a hedge fund for Citibank. Ambassador Michael Punke is Deputy USTR. Lawyer and former Editor of the Cornell International Law Journal, he is also the author of novels and screenplays, including: The Revenant: a Novel of Revenge (now a Hollywood motion picture staring Leonardo DiCaprio). Christopher Wilson, Deputy Chief of Mission to the WTO. Graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Michelle Lee, Director of the USPTO. Lee holds two degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and a law degree from Stanford University School of Law. She was Head of Patents and Patent Strategy for Google before joining the USPTO. Shira Perlmutter is the Chief Policy Officer and Director for International Affairs at the USPTO. She holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania law school. Before joining USPTO she worked for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), and earlier Vice President and Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property Policy at Time Warner.

Street Child in Srimangal, Bangladesh. Population 159 million, 2014 per capita income $1080. Employees of Vita Foam working in Freetown, Sierra Leone on June 19, 2015. 2014 per capita income $710, population 6.3 million. Family in Democratic Republic of Congo. 2014 per capita income $380, population 75 million. Uganda. 2014 per capita income $680, population 38 million. Children in Burundi. 2014 per capita income $270, population 10.8 million. Child in Madagascar, 2014 per capita income $440, population 24 million. Myanmar. 2014 per capita income of $1,270, population 56 million. Women transporting water in Chad. 2014 per capita income $980, population 13.6 million

More on this negotiation at: /wto-ldc-patentwaiver

Credits on photos

USG: Official U.S. government officials for everyone but Chris Wilson, whose picture is provided by the WTO.
For the developing country photos, the credits and permissions are as follows:

Bangladesh
Md. Tanvirul Islam
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Street_Child%2C_Srimangal_Railway_Station.jpg
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

Sierra Leone
Dominic Chavez
https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/worldbank/20007295426/
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Democratic Republic of Congo
Julien Harneis

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Uganda
Dylan Walters

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Burundi
Francesca Ansaloni

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Madagascar
Steve Evans

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Myanmar
Richard-dicky
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Rijstvelden_Myanmar_2006.jpg
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

Chad
Rebecca Musarra
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Mao_Women.jpg
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.