Symposium on global health and intellectual property: Patients, Patents and Profits
Berlin: In his Lecture "Controlling institutions – The significance of public participation" criticised Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg (SPD, MdB), chairman of the sub-committee on health in the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, that patents would no longer be used as a reward, but as weapons in the battle for monopolies. The terrain of research would be mined by patents which in turn would hinder innovation. Furthermore he referred to the fact that via the granting of patents, besides the dispossession of public knowledge, important decisions in health-policy are removed from public control. Decisions of the European patent office, for instance, cannot be reviewed by any parliament. On these grounds, he calls for a compulsory estimation of a patent's consequences and a provision for the retraction of a patent in cases of ample public interest.
More than 100 persons with varied backgrounds in science, politics, state as well as non-state development co-operation, activist-networks and the pharmaceutical industry followed the invitation to the one-day symposium "Patients, Patents and Profits" by medico international and its partner-organizers BUKO Pharma-Kampagne, Brot für die Welt und Misereor. The venue, the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's representation to the federal government in Berlin not far from the Brandenburg Gate, was deliberately chosen in view of imminent G8-summit in Heiligendamm. On the panels, high-calibre health specialists from the US, Thailand, Kenya, Brazil, South-Africa and other countries delivered substantiated appraisals and analyses of the rising tensions between global health and intellectual property. In the process, the experts moved far beyond a critique of the existing system of research, development and access to medicines necessary for survival. They developed joint proposals for publicly controlled research and alternative incentive- and pricing-systems, which could ensure low-cost drugs and thus access for the poor.
