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:
During the debate of California bill AB 463, on the Pharmaceutical Cost Transparency Act of 2015, Kassy Perry was using Twitter to attack the bill, posting links to and repeating pharmaceutical industry talking points. Who is Kassy Perry? A founder of Perry Communications, a Sacramento public relations and lobbying firm. This is her Twitter profile:
The NIH has a notice about a proposed rule that “clarifies and expands requirements for the submission of clinical trial registration and results information to the ClinicalTrials.gov database.” Comments are due on or before February 19, 2015. We may ask the NIH to consider expanding the trials registry to include more information on the economics of clinical trials.
Here is a link to the Regulations.Gov docket for the proposed rule:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=NIH-2011-0003-0003 Continue Reading
On November 24, 2014. the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) sent a letter to Anthony P. Monaco, Office of the President, Tufts University, with copies to Michael Baenen, the Tufts Chief of Staff, and Peter Dolan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Tufts University, regarding the Tufts University press conference to announce an estimate of $2.6 billion as the R&D costs for new drugs. Continue Reading
For more information:
James Love, Knowledge Ecology International
email: james.love@keionline.org, +1.202.361.3040
The May 16, 2014 version of the consolidated negotiating text for the Intellectual Property Chapter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is a long, complex document that taken as a whole is designed to expand and extend monopolies on knowledge goods, including in particular publisher-owned copyrights, patents on inventions, and monopoly rights in data used to register new drugs, vaccines and agricultural chemical products.
In 2012, as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Ron Wyden was a strong advocate for providing the public with access to the TPP negotiating text. Now, as Chairman, the Senator has been silent on the public’s right to the text. This is an example of Wyden in 2012. Has his position changed?
Timestamp and notes on Wyden comments on need for transparency in TPP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUYCSSdhEC8
Previously, KEI reported on the terms of reference (TOR) for the confidentiality of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiating texts, as laid out in a letter by USTR to DG-Trade. Although evidently publicly available, the EU counterpart of that letter was not accessible through the FOIA process. Obtained through the EU Regulation (EC) No. Continue Reading
KEI has obtained the terms of reference (TOR) for the confidentiality of the negotiating texts of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement. The TOR are laid out in a two-page letter from US Chief Negotiator Dan Mullaney to EU Chief Negotiator Ignacio Garcia-Bercero which is available here. The letter was obtained through a FOIA request filed by KEI with the USTR on May 19, 2014.
Wednesday, at the George Mason University Law Campus in Arlington, VA, the Office of the US Trade Representative hosted an all day Stakeholder Forum in conjunction with the fifth negotiating round of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The first part of the day was devoted to Stakeholder Policy Presentations, with several hours of presentations by a variety of industry, academics, trade associations, and public interest groups. The latter part of the day consisted of a briefing by the US Chief Negotiator Dan Mullaney and the EU Chief Negotiator Ignacio Garcia-Bercero.
Comments of KEI, regarding USTR Request For Comments From The Public On The Creation Of The Public Interest Trade Advisory Committee And Request For Nominees To That Committee.
Submitted to Regulations.gov on March 25, 2014, under docket number USTR-2014-0005.
Intellectual property issues are an important element of US trade agreements, and according to a recent study by Open Secrets, the most intensively lobbied issue, by far.