The most favorable explanation for what is going on this week in Geneva is that Hillary Clinton and Obama are not following what key Bush hold-overs are about to do. The less favorable explanation is that Secretaries Clinton (State) and Sebelius (HHS) and the Obama White House are closely working with PhRMA to kill any further discussions of a medical R&D treaty at the WHO.
The medical R&D treaty has been discussed by many governments at the WHO, and supported by a very long list of health, consumer and development NGOs, including MSF, Oxfam, Health Action International, HealthGap, the 80 member TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue, Knowledge Ecology International, Essential Action, and others. (See earlier expressions of support here, here, here, and here).
At present, the United States government is the leading source of government funded medical R&D, through agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. In both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP, no other country comes close.
Health groups want more spent on priority medical R&D, particularly in areas such as the development of new antibiotics and vaccines, or treatments for neglected diseases. Given the dominant role of the U.S. in funding medical R&D now, this would largely result in increased obligations for other countries, particularly those with high incomes.
There are is also discussion about possible sharing of the costs of independent clinical trials for the development and evaluation of new medicines, greater transparency of the R&D resource flows and outputs, the use of new incentive systems like innovation inducement prizes that de-link R&D incentives from drug pricing, and many other topics (see below).
The efforts to discuss new trade and business models for R&D have delighted public health groups, but alarmed PhRMA.
The WHO is governed by World Health Assembly (WHA), which meets once a year, and an Executive Board, which meets twice a year. The annual WHA meeting began on Monday, and ends on Friday. The U.S. government delegation that is following this issue includes representatives from the Department of State, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the United States Trade Representative. State (Hillary's Department) seems to be taking the lead.
The U.S. position has now been incorporated in a draft resolution written by the WHO secretariat, which is highly responsive to US pressure. The US does not have its name on the resolution, which is sponsored by the Delegations of Canada, Chile, Iran (Islamic Republic), Japan, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Norway and Switzerland. (Distributed to the 62nd WHA as document A62/A/Conf.Paper No.4)
The deal the US has pushed is to force developing countries to choose between (a) the medical R&D treaty or (b) the ability of the WHO to look at other intellectual property issues relating to access to medicines. Basically the US delegation has conceded that it cannot block all efforts to deal with access to medicines, but it wants to stop any discussions that would be more transformative, in terms of trade or business models for medical R&D, that are opposed by PhRMA.
Negotiators say Obama is following the Bush game plan even more aggressively than was done when Bush was president.
And let's look at why drugs are dirt cheap in Canada, France, UK and Germany because the
"United States government is the leading source of government funded medical R&D"
yes, we the citizens in the US pay for the development, clinical and hand all the profit making results to the Phamr Co to produce, and theses countries benefit and the US tax payer subsidize these countries by paying the high price.
Our tax payer universities produce it, test it and then give it away with no financial benefit to the US citizens.
How dumb is that?
Further, most of the money to develop these drugs come from the US tax payer - one should ask why are we even paying let along twice and at such a high price.
The American People can have anything they want, they just don't seem to want much of anything.
Who is the boss? Who is the Prezident, the decision maker? "The Decider"?
Why are you slapping 'Hillary' in the headline?
The 'Department she heads' can not take a decision at a world organization like WHO without instructions or approval from the POTUS.
The President sets the policy, we are reminded all the time, so he should take credit for successes and be accountable for policy decissions, we should not try to assign blame to Hillary Clinton for an Obama administration decission we don't like.
When ever the White House doesn't just lay down let peeps walk all over them they are acting like Bush?
This is so one sided it's sickening.
I'm gonna pray that progressives one day wake up and realize they've been had, again. I'm gonna pray that folks realize that calling center-right corporatist oligarchs like Obama and Bill Clinton "liberals" is the realization of Orwellian doublespeak. Cont'd.
Obama is being more Bush than Bush?
Okay, this is really the last straw. This one isn't just about American lives anymore, this is potentially jeopardizing life all around the world.