TIGHT intellectual property regimes are rarely in the interest of poor countries (快猫短视频, 12 July, p 21). I asked Gareth Thomas, the Department for International Development (DFID) minister with responsibility for HIV and AIDS, what can be done about such regimes in the context of medicines, especially those for HIV and AIDS. Thomas replied that members of the World Trade Organization had agreed on an amendment to the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement (TRIPS). As a consequence, developing countries with only a limited or no capacity to make drugs will be able to import generic medicines to meet their public health needs.
The amendment was necessary because under the TRIPS agreement, countries producing copies of patented drugs, such as India, will have to introduce patent protection from 2005 and so will not be able to produce cheaper copies of new patented medicines for export to other developing countries. The new agreement aims to ease this restriction by introducing compulsory licences to supply copies of patented medicines to countries in dire need.
Thomas went on to suggest that compulsory licensing is a useful bargaining tool for governments negotiating with suppliers of patented medicines.
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I gather the DFID will monitor the impact of the agreement. The department has a strategy on intellectual property rights which tackles access to new medicines and their development after 2005.
THERE has been a catastrophic decline in forestry in the UK in the past five years. The number of undergraduate, graduate and advanced forestry students has declined by 55 per cent. In the past, the DFID and the Natural Environment Research Council were major supporters of forestry research, maintaining its position as an academic subject. However, the DFID has shifted its focus to research in the social sciences and the NERC now tends to support its own research institutes. The Forestry Commission must consequently use its diminishing funds to support its own research stations. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs supports far less forestry research than in the past. The European Union has provided generous support, but its funding programme, Framework 6, now aims to channel most of its research funds elsewhere.
I am told that these bleak factors mean universities are increasingly unwilling to fund academic posts in forestry. In the near future the UK could lose the capacity to produce forest managers competent in resource assessments, or to select and manage species for particular soils and environments. This is a most serious matter.
