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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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WHO has kindly made available its conflict of interest guidelines. Apparently they are not available from the public web page. Attached are two documents:

• Conflict of Interest Guidelines and Procedures
• Declaration of Interests for WHO Experts

A few of the many interesting provisions follow:

I. MEANING OF “CONFLICT OF INTEREST”

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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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This note provide additional context for those who are just now following the issue of conflicts of interest and the WHO Consultative Expert Working Group (CEWG) on R&D Financing.

The CEWG follows a controversial, flawed and failed effort by an earlier group, the WHO Expert Working Group (EWG) on R&D Financing, to:

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At the end of the day on Monday, the 128 WHO Executive Board meeting took the agenda item for creation of a new R&D Financing consultative expert working group (CEWG). (Yesterday’s blog on this topic is here)

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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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The US based National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are collaborating on a program called Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development (BREAD). A May 12, 2010 NSF announcement about the program is available here. Continue Reading →

As 2011 unfolds, the following conferences and negotiations are expected to shape the knowledge governance landscape this year at WHO, WIPO and WTO.

World Health Organization

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The following graph presents the year 2000 raw mortality rate of breast cancer patients in 36 European Countries. The graph compares the ratio of breast cancer deaths to the annual incidence of breast cancer, to the per capita incomes in those countries, all based upon year 2000 data. Continue Reading →