THE LAW LOFT
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2001
SPECIAL ALERT II
FAST TRACK POSES
THREAT TO WORLDWIDE
ACCESS TO HERBS AND BOTANICALS
What Happened - in Congress:
The United States House of
Representatives is set to vote on fast track aka trade promotion
authority on Thursday, December 6, 2001. If both houses of the
Congress say yes to fast track, at a later time the results of the
Qatar Round of Negotiations within the World Trade Organization will
be brought before Congress on an up or down vote basis without right
of amendment. This system, vote yes or vote no on the whole package,
has resulted in the passage of disastrous legislation in the past
because every package contained something that most members of
Congress wanted badly enough to forgive the rest.
This time although it hasn’t
received any attention in the United States (or abroad for that
matter) what Americans and others will be giving up is nothing less
than worldwide free access to herbs and botanicals and traditional
remedies.
What Happened - in Qatar:
In November in Qatar, the
member nations of the World Trade Organization decided to launch a new
round of trade negotiations that will ultimately lead to the creation
of a package of trade and investment deals. If fast track succeeds,
that package will be offered to Congress on an up or down basis.
While the Law Loft was at
the World Trade Organization in Geneva , we found out that:
The Qatar Round
negotiations include express authorization for the launch of
negotiations to make herbs, botanicals and traditional medicines
patentable products on a worldwide basis.
Under the current Agreement
on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (called the TRIPS
agreement), countries reserve the right to exclude herbs, botanicals
and traditional medicines from patentability.This exclusion has
prevented the big pharmaceutical interests from getting a lock on
traditional remedies. The Law Loft has discovered that earlier this
year, Switzerland, home of some the world’s largest pharmaceutical
holding companies, successfully promoted the launch of negotiations to
make herbs and botanicals and traditional remedies patentable products
arguing that the research and development that will be needed to make
them more widely available requires patent protection. (We suspect
that a deal was struck in Qatar that said in exchange for launching a
new round of negotiations to amend TRIPS to make AIDS remedies
more available in developing countries including developing countries
that don’t have domestic pharmaceutical industries, the developing
countries agreed to launch negotiations to amend TRIPS to make herbs,
botanicals and traditional remedies patentable on a global basis. That’s
a bad deal even from the view point of AIDS stricken countries because
they already have emergency powers to suspend patent rights under
TRIPS.)
Where does the Bush administration stand?:
Based on its past behavior,
we think the Bush administration favors patenting herbs, botanicals
and traditional remedies. But we don’t know for sure and we won’t
know for sure until after the vote in the House on fast track this
week.
Why don’t we know for
sure? Because the Bush administration put its position paper on
patentability of herbs, botanicals and traditional remedies under seal
at the World Trade Organization. The US position paper won’t become
public until after the fast track vote.
Putting it another way,
this Administration has asked Congress to vote to reinforce and ratify
the launch of the Qatar Round without telling Congress one of the key
elements that is inside the trade negotiations package!
What you should do now:
The vote on fast track on
Thursday is described as too close to call. That means that nobody
knows for sure if it will win or lose. Too close to call also means
that grassroots pressure on members of the House of Representatives
can have a real effect on the outcome.
Call, fax, or e-mail your
Congressman right now and tell him or her:
Don’t give this
administration another blank check. Protect our right to herbs,
botanicals and traditional remedies. Patent protection is supposed to
advance the state of knowledge by rewarding an inventor by protecting
his right to profit from the commercialization of his own
inventions. Patent protection is not meant to be just thinly
disguised theft.
Vote no on fast track!
This isn’t trade, its theft!
© 2001 The Law Loft, all rights
reserved. Permission is hereby granted to copy this document
provided the text is copied in its entirety without amendment or
deletion and the Law Loft is credited as its author.
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