Author: James Love

KEI submissions to the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Access to Medicine

Posted on by James Love

Attached below are the four submissions for which KEI was the lead author to the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel (HLP) on Access to Medicine.

  1. “The Need for Global Negotiations on Agreements to Fund R&D within the Context of a Progressive De-linking of R&D Costs from Product Prices”. Supported by 12 organizations; 1 individual; 3 Members of European Parliament.
  2. “Increasing the Transparency of Markets for Drugs, Vaccines, Diagnostics and other Medical Technologies”. Supported by 17 organizations; 2 individuals; 3 Members of European Parliament.

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Equitable Access Initiative (EAI), 1st intervention

Posted on by James Love

I am in a meeting of the Equitable Access Initiative (EAI), which is considering new ways of measuring development and/or health needs, in the context of the priority setting by donors. I am a member of the Expert Panel, and this was my intervention in the morning session:

The presentations by John McArthur and Dominik Zotti were excellent, and the work of the four expert groups is a very useful contribution for those struggling with the challenge of setting priorities for aid.

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5 questions about NIH licenses to patents on Production of Attenuated Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccines

Posted on by James Love

The NIH has a notice for comments on proposed licenses of several patents relating to the “Production of Attenuated Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccines”. See: https://federalregister.gov/a/2016-03486

We asked Peter Soukas, a Senior Technology Licensing Specialist in the Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Office, at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), these questions:

  1. What provisions exist in the license to protect US residents against excessive or unreasonable pricing?

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Obama asks the Senate to ratify the Marrakesh treaty for the blind

Posted on by James Love

This is the announcement.

For Immediate Release February 10, 2016

TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES:

With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled, done at Marrakesh on June 27, 2013 (Marrakesh Treaty). I also transmit, for the information of the Senate, a report of the Secretary of State with respect to the Marrakesh Treaty that includes a summary of its provisions.

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Xtandi 2016 March-In Request

Posted on by James Love

Today Knowledge Ecology International and the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) petitioned the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health, asking that they exercise either their royalty-free, non-exclusive license or federal “march-in” rights to end the monopoly on an expensive prostate cancer drug, enzalutamide, marketed as Xtandi by Astellas, a Japanese pharmaceutical company.

Xtandi was invented at UCLA on federal grants from the NIH and DoD.

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