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Did India beat Big Pharma in drug patents war? |

Flickr, by Rodrigo Senna

The Guardian asks: Did India beat Big Pharma in the patent wars?:

“Two recent court cases in India may have changed the rules of the game. On 1 April, pharma giant Novartis lost a six-year legal battle after the Indian supreme court ruled that small changes to its leukaemia drug Glivec did not deserve a new patent…. (O)nly one month before, India upheld a compulsory licence of Bayer’s cancer drug Nexavar, effectively allowing generics firms to copy a patented drug, reportedly bringing the price down from more than $5,500 (£3,540) per month to $175 (£112). Both rulings are landmark cases, vehemently criticised by both Big Pharma and major drugs-producing countries.”

So, this author asks, has India won the patent war with Big Pharma?

Answer: Not really. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Business, access, drugs, India, Novartis, patents

April 22, 2013 | 10:30 AM | By Jessica Mack |

Rape of Five-Year-Old Will Test Police Accountability in India’s New Law |

: Flickr

A 24-year old man in Delhi has been arrested in connection with the brutal rape of a five-year-old girl, his neighbor, whom he kidnapped and held for days without food.

The young girl remains in critical condition from the torture and injuries she suffered while held captive. Indians are again outraged, as much by the horrific act as by the response from the police.

This high-profile incident comes less than one month after India’s Parliament passed a new rape law, spurred by another high profile case – the gang rape of a young woman on a Delhi bus in December 2012. Protestors have again taken to the streets, with demonstrations through the weekend and more planned this week.

Yet the perpetrator, whose actions are unquestionably evil, is not the primary focus of such protests and outrage. Rather, protestors are decrying the ineptitude and lethargy of the Delhi police who investigated the case. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Justice, India, law enforcement, protests, Sexual violence

April 3, 2013 | 11:45 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Indian slum activists are Revolutionary Optimists at Melinda Gates TED talk |

Today, at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was another one of those TED franchise talks.

For this latest spin-off of the popular by-invitation-only main TED talks, this one known as a TEDxChange, Melinda Gates hosted a talk given in Seattle and webcast online on positive disruption – on challenging time-worn assumptions, prompting creative solutions to entrenched problems and inspiring even the most disenfranchised to recognize their personal power.

Speakers included a clever young poet from Nigeria, a theologian who claimed it was progress for the Catholic Church to officially consider the possibility that condoms are not immoral, a social media expert who claimed social media is changing the world, journalist Roger Thurow (an expert on hunger and agriculture in Africa) and an inspiring young woman Melinda met on a trip to Niger.

Like most TED talks, it was fun with a lot of broad and encouraging statements without too many complicating details. The webcast itself was ‘negatively disrupted’ (lots of jokes on Twitter about this) when the TED live stream dropped just as Melinda was making her opening statements. It was restored minutes later.

Of all the featured speakers, there may be no better examples of positive disruptors than 14-year-old Sikha Patra and 15-year-old Salim Shekh, along with their revolutionary Bengali community activist and mentor Amlan Ganguly. Salim and Sikha spoke with Melinda at the event. I talked with them earlier. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Amlan Ganguly, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, India, Melinda Gates, Prayasam, Revolutionary Optimists, TED

April 1, 2013 | 1:55 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Drug industry loses in India – fight over ‘patents vs poor’ to continue |

: Flickr, sparktography

The Indian Supreme Court has rejected a drug patent application by the international pharmaceutical firm Novartis, an event that merited coverage by the New York Times, BBC and many other media – news which you might think is mostly a matter for the business page or drug industry insiders.

In fact, the case may represent one of the most difficult dilemmas in global health. It is a fight that is far from over.

The Indian high court’s legal resolution (or perhaps ‘latest phase’) of this long-running battle between the Indian government and Novartis, as I wrote about last October in a post called Patents vs the Poor, is regarded on all sides as representing much more than what Novartis can charge for the particular cancer drug, Gleevec (or Glivec), at issue.

What’s at stake is one of global health’s most difficult balancing acts – how to expand access of life-saving medicines to the poor while also protecting the legitimate interests of the drug industry when it comes to patent protection and intellectual property. The high court’s decision is being reported as a victory of the generic drug industry, which is big in India, over Western drug makers. As the New York Times put it:

On the one hand, it will help maintain India’s role as the world’s most important provider of cheap medicines, which is critical in the global fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases…. On the other hand, the ruling could cost lives in the future. Drug company executives and others argue that India’s failure to grant patents for critical medicines … is a shortsighted strategy that undermines a vital system for funding new discoveries.

That’s what Novartis’ head of corporate research, Paul Herrling, told me:

Paul Herrling

Novartis

“If a breakthrough compound like this cannot be patented in India, that has major consequences for innovation in India and elsewhere,” said Paul Herrling. “This isn’t really about Gleevec … This is just one part of a much larger issue.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Business, Health, drug industry, generic drugs, India, Medicins Sans Frontieres, Novartis, patents

March 29, 2013 | 12:01 PM | By Tom Murphy |

Sinking BRICS? How the emerging nations may, or may not, tip the global balance |

A meeting of the major middle-income countries in South Africa garnered plenty of attention, but produced little in terms of actual policies.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) account for over 40% of the world’s population, 1/4 of the world’s GDP and are responsible for 55% of the global economic growth since 2009. The BRICS have raced onward in the face of the financial downturn and are poised to take a larger share of the global economy in the coming years.

What will this mean for development, for the global push to reduce poverty, inequity and the so-called north-south imbalance of power. Some experts think not much, because the BRICS are more a concept than a cohesive force. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Brazil, BRIC, BRICS, China, India, Russia, South Africa

March 18, 2013 | 11:44 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Seattle Times profile of Landesa’s work with women farmers in India |

The Seattle Times, with support from The Seattle International Foundation (also one of my primary funders), has produced a beautiful and in-depth report on the work of Landesa promoting land rights for women in India. It’s a great read, written by Melissa Allison and photographed by Erika Shultz.

: Woman farmer in West Bengal; Seattle Times, Erika Schultz

Landesa has been around a long time, formerly known as as the Rural Development Institute, and was founded by former University of Washington law professor Roy Prosterman (who I’ve had occasion to write about many times before, such as this post called Land Reform and Bulletproof Vests). The Times did a good profile of Roy as well. Erika’s blog as a photographer is also worth a look.

FILED UNDER: Basics, India, Landesa, Roy Prosterman

April 5, 2012 | 9:29 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Brazil, China and other “emerging” nations want to take the lead on aid and development |

The group of nations known (by wonks anyway) as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are fast moving away from being recipients of foreign assistance and toward taking a more active role as donors, drivers of aid and development.

It’s worth paying attention to this shift, what’s driving it and the broader implications beginning with the prediction that the U.S. will soon be second to China as a world economic power. These ‘development’ issues may soon be viewed less as charitable America sending help overseas and more about assuring that a globalized world doesn’t simply increase inequities everywhere.

Flickr, Blog do Planalto

BRICS 2011 meeting in China

At this group’s recent summit meeting in New Delhi, these countries which now represent half the world’s population said they want more of a say in how the world fights poverty, reduces inequities and who gets to make the decisions. As the Mail & Guardian online reported, the BRICS are reshaping a reluctant world order partly out of anger at the West’s historic dominance:

The BRICS grouping’s political clout has grown with its importance to the world economy and the latest summit declared its intention to set up (its own) development bank.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Brazil, BRICS, China, India, Russia, South Africa

February 21, 2012 | 10:01 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Kentaro Toyama, geek heretic, on “The Two Indias” |

Kentaro Toyama

Kentaro Toyama is a Seattle man on a mission.

A computer and information scientist who co-founded and ran Microsoft Research in India, Toyama has become something of a ‘geek heretic‘ who is now devoted to fighting poverty and transforming our approach to aid and development. A big task but Toyama seems to be enjoying his new career.

Toyama provides a glimpse of that mission in an article he published this week in The Atlantic – The Two Indias: Astounding Poverty in the Backyard of Amazing Growth. Opening line:

“Incredible India” is the brand this country’s Ministry of Tourism has been pushing in a global marketing campaign launched in 2002, and it couldn’t be more fitting. Over the last decade, India has witnessed a stunning acceleration of rapid changes, both good and bad, that it began in the 1990s.

India’s economic growth over the past decade is second in the world only to China’s. The country which handles so many of our computer technical problems is widely perceived as on a path to prosperity and progress. But wait, look a bit deeper, says Toyama.

Though theoretically a democracy, India’s governance has resembled something of a feudal system in practice. Politicians and bureaucrats often act like dukes and barons with term limits. They routinely apply a corrupt layer of graft for their personal benefit…. (and) Though rates of poverty are declining, in 2005 the World Bank estimated that 42% of India’s population still lived at under $1.25 a day (PPP), and nearly twice as many under $2. Thus, 800-900 million Indians live in conditions that most developed-world citizens would consider destitution.

Kentaro’s article in The Atlantic is brief, but worth a read. And worth reading between the lines to follow his thinking. There’s a warning here, against assuming overall economic growth is an accurate measure of progress against poverty — and against business as usual.