Knowledge Ecology International

As candidates, almost all democrats have promised voters, in several elections, they will support parallel trade in pharmaceuticals from Canada and other high income countries. As elected officials, nothing happens. President Obama already has authority to permit imports of medicines, if he wanted to exercise it. But not only is the White House not fullfillinbg the promise to allow imports, it has promised the CEO of PhRMA and several big companies that they won’t allow parallel trade in the health reform bill.

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The Center for American Progress hosted a video conference of Dr. Howard Dean talking about Health Care reform on Tueday. The video is on the web here. On this one hour program, Howard Dean spends a little over 3 minutes responding to allegations that he is a “shill” for BIO, on the issue of biosimilars.

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According to data from OpenSecrets.Org, from 1992 to 2006, Pfizer gave 74 percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans. Since then, particularly after Hank McKinnell left as CEO, Pfizer is giving slightly more to democrats than to republicans. In the current cycle, 54 percent of contributions go to democrats. Continue Reading →

The July 20, 2009 issue of BioCentury has an extensive report on the “Biosimilar fire Drill.” It discusses in detail the lobbying by the Biotechnology Industry Association (BIO, bio.org) to defeat efforts by President Obama, OMB, the FTC, Representative Waxman, Senator Brown, AARP, Public Citizen, PIRG, Consumers Union, KEI, Essential Action, and others, to reform the regulation to biologic medicines, so there is more generic competition. Continue Reading →

Congress should reject the 12-14.5 year monopoly for biologic products provided for in HR 1548

KEI* opposes H.R.1548, the bill to “establish a pathway for the licensure of biosimilar biological products,” on the grounds that the period of the monopoly is excessive, and not subject to safeguards that would protect consumers.

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On July 14, 2009, at the WIPO Conference on Intellectual Property and Public Policy Issues, Michael Kock (Global Head IP Seeds and Biotechnology at Syngenta International AG) underscored that today’s global challenges can only dealt with in an efficient manner by creating innovation networks which included the reward of substantial amounts of money to solve technical challenges and problems.

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At the WIPO Conference on Intellectual Property and Public Policy Issues today, Margaret Chan, the Director General of the World Health Organization, made the following speech at WIPO’s Conference on Intellectual Property and Public Policy Issues on the topic of “Strengthening Multilateral Cooperation on IP and Public Health” where she shared the limelight with Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organ Continue Reading →

On July 14, 2009, KEI, will host a brownbag on the Google Book settlement. The even will be held at the KEI Washington, DC offices, 1621 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20009. (Tel +1 202 332 2670 for directions or more information).

The speaker will be Alexander Macgillivray, the Deputy General Counsel at Google.

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