December 23, 2005
On Opinion Page, a Lobby's Hand Is Often Unseen
By PHILIP SHENON, NY TIMES

LINK

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - Susan Finston of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative research group based in Texas, is just the sort of opinion maker coveted by the drug industry.

In an opinion article in The Financial Times on Oct. 25, she called for patent protection in poor countries for drugs and biotechnology products. In an article last month in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal, she called for efforts to block developing nations from violating patents on AIDS medicines and other drugs.

Both articles identified her as a "research associate" at the institute. Neither mentioned that, as recently as August, Ms. Finston was registered as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry's trade group. Nor was there mention of her work this fall in creating the American Bioindustry Alliance, a group underwritten largely by drug companies.

The institute says Ms. Finston's ties to industry should not have prevented her from writing about those issues. Nor is there a conflict, it says, in the work of Merrill Matthews Jr., who writes for major newspapers advocating policies promoted by the insurance industry even though he is a registered lobbyist for a separate group backed by it. "Lobbying is not a four-letter word," said the institute's president, Tom Giovanetti.

But organizations like the institute, which bills itself as an independent, nonprofit research group committed to a "smaller, less intrusive government," are facing new and uncomfortable scrutiny over their links to special interest groups after the disclosure this week that the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff had paid at least two outside writers for opinion articles promoting the work of his clients.

One writer, Peter Ferrara, an advocate of privatizing Social Security who is often quoted by news organizations, including The New York Times, works for the institute as a senior policy adviser.

The other, Doug Bandow, a scholar for the libertarian Cato Institute and a columnist for the Copley News Service, resigned from both after acknowledging that he had received as much as $2,000 an article from Mr. Abramoff for writing in support of his lobbying clients, including Indian tribe casinos. Mr. Abramoff is now the focus of a federal corruption investigation involving his gifts to members of Congress.

The issue of whether supposedly independent writers and researchers are having their work underwritten - directly or indirectly - by lobbyists and other special interests is hardly new.

But the payments by Mr. Abramoff and a closer review of the work of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a group founded in 1987 by a former House Republican leader, Dick Armey of Texas, are evidence that the ties may be much closer than research organizations, conservative and liberal, would prefer to admit.

The Bush administration acknowledged this year that it had paid outside writers, including Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist and television commentator, to promote the Education Department policy known as No Child Left Behind.

Executives in the public relations and lobbying industries say that the hiring of outside commentators to promote special interests - typically by writing newspaper opinion articles or in radio and television interviews - does happen, although it is impossible to monitor since the payments do not have to be disclosed and can be disguised as speaking fees and other compensation.

While major newspapers and magazines usually insist that outside writers disclose conflicts of interest, editors do not routinely conduct background checks, especially for authors affiliated with credible research groups.

Brian Groom, an editor at The Financial Times who handles opinion articles for the newspaper, based in London, said he did not recall being told of Ms. Finston's ties to the drug and biotechnology industries before publishing the article.

The editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, Paul Gigot, said in an interview that "we're absolutely convinced" the paper was not told of Ms. Finston's industry ties. The paper might still have run the article, he said, but with more information about her background.

David Rickey, chairman of the board of ethics of the Public Relations Society of America, an industry group that includes lobbyists, said the industry opposed the use of outside writers to promote a client's interests unless the financial ties were fully acknowledged. "This is going to sound pretty much mom and apple pie," he said. "But if there is a conflict of interest, it must be disclosed."

In announcing the departure of Mr. Bandow last week, the Cato Institute said it required its writers to disclose all affiliations that might influence their work.

Mr. Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation said that he, too, insisted that "anyone working with I.P.I. must disclose any pertinent lobbying relationships and conflicts of interest whenever they act on behalf of I.P.I., including published projects."

But he also suggested it was naïve to see a conflict of interest in the articles by Ms. Finston or by Dr. Matthews. There is no accusation that Ms. Finston or Dr. Matthews, unlike Mr. Ferrara, received direct payments from an outside lobbyist like Mr. Abramoff for an opinion article.

Mr. Giovanetti said it was "no surprise that a person can move back and forth between the worlds of lobbying and public policy, just as a person can move back and forth between policy and politics."

In a brief interview, Ms. Finston said that she left the pharmaceutical manufacturers' association in May and that the filings showing her as a lobbyist as recently as mid-August were in error.

She said that she notified the institute this fall that she would be ending her relationship with it to turn her attention to the American Bioindustry Alliance, the new trade group, but that her articles were already in the pipeline for publication. She said she believed that the papers had been told of her industry ties by the institute. "It's clear that there shouldn't be any subterfuge," she said.

Dr. Matthews, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, said in an interview that he was careful to identify his ties to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, an industry group based in Alexandria, Va., when writing about insurance issues for outside publications.

He noted his affiliation with both the council and the institute in several recent opinion articles, including one published Dec. 5 in USA Today titled, "Medicaid Is Still Welfare." The article recommended that the government allow participants in Medicaid, the federal health program for more than 50 million low-income people, to "move into private insurance." The council's Web site identifies it as an "advocacy organization promoting free-market health insurance reforms."

Dr. Matthews said that while he was identified as a lobbyist in Congressional records, he lived in Texas and "can't think of the last time I was on Capitol Hill talking to a legislator."

Mr. Giovanetti said the institute had a policy of not identifying its individual donors. But he did reveal that it received no money from health insurance companies, lessening a possible conflict of interest in its relationship with Dr. Matthews. Asked if the institute had accepted money from pharmaceutical manufacturers or any drug companies affiliated with Ms. Finston, Mr. Giovanetti would not comment.

OP-ED in The Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2005:

Doha Catches the Avian Flu

Wall Street Journal (Europe ed.)
By SUSAN K. FINSTON
November 16, 2005

LINK

Avian flu may or may not become a pandemic but it's already infected
global trade talks.

In the run-up to next month's World Trade Organization meeting in Hong
Kong, most press coverage has focused on the high-profile disagreements
over farm subsidies and tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods and
services. A less-noticed but important part of the so-called Doha round
of trade talks are the rules that govern the WTO.

Here, discord over an amendment to the agreement on Trade Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, threatens to boil
over politically. Specifically, members have been unable to settle on a
provision that would allow the production of medicines under compulsory
licensing for export to poor countries lacking manufacturing capacity.
Under proposed language, developing countries without domestic
pharmaceutical producers would be able to issue compulsory licenses to
overseas producers, like India's Cipla, to meet their market needs in
the event of a national public health emergency. Under terms agreed in
2003, this amendment was to include protections against spurious or
non-humanitarian usage -- restricting compulsory licensing to clear
emergencies and preventing poor patients from receiving counterfeit
medications -- as well as the diversion of these cheap generic drugs
from the African nations for which they are intended to lucrative
markets in Europe.

But African states are now demanding that these safeguards be scrapped
on the grounds that they create new barriers to medicine access. To
strengthen their case, these developing countries and activists who have
been trying to tear down intellectual property rights for decades are
now playing on public fears about a potential avian flu pandemic.

Deleting the safeguards, however, might very well put African patients
at greater risk than ever before. Both diversion of drugs and
counterfeiting of HIV/AIDS medicines have been documented in Uganda and
elsewhere in the developing world, with disastrous impact. Counterfeit
or substandard drugs contribute substantially to the growth of
drug-resistant HIV/AIDS strains, while diversion of cheap generic drugs
to Europe threatens continuing supplies of essential medicines for the
poorest and most vulnerable patients in Africa. This "solution" actually
would make it harder for stressed public health institutions in
developing countries to get essential medicines to patients.

But in the reality-optional Geneva trade talks, these facts are irrelevant.

Over the next few weeks, many expect to see further concessions to
anti-patent activists and developing countries in the form of new
carve-outs for intellectual property relating to medicines as a way of
resolving the issue before the Hong Kong meeting. This means that
developed states may well give in to demands on the TRIPS and public
health issue without getting anything in return. This is exactly what
happened in Cancun in 2003.

In truth, there is no action item on the medicine access issue that
requires resolution before Hong Kong, and some unlikely developing
countries like Brazil and Malaysia have pointed this out during recent
discussions. But many key WTO members are all too eager to move on
medicine access before Hong Kong to clear space for other dubious issues
on the Doha agenda. These include European demands for broader
protection of geographic indications relating to specialty farm products
and increasing pressure from Brazil and India to dilute biotechnology
patents.

With all this in mind, it's clear that an early resolution of the access
to medicines issue in the weeks leading to the Hong Kong Ministerial
could cause much more long-term damage to commercial interests in the
U.S. and elsewhere than the headline-grabbing agriculture talks.

Ms. Finston is a research associate with the Institute for Policy
Innovation.

Commentary: An American BioIndustry Alliance Perspective on CBD/TRIPS Issues in the Doha Round
Susan K. Finston, American BioIndustry Alliance, Washington, DC

A commentary on: Achieving Fairness in the Doha Development Round by Andrew Brown and Robert M. Stern.

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Susan K. Finston (2005) "Commentary: An American BioIndustry Alliance Perspective on CBD/TRIPS Issues in the Doha Round", Global Economy Journal: Vol. 5: No. 4, Article 24.

LINK

Commentary on the relationship between the Convention on Biological Diversity and the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

Susan Finston is Executive Director of the American BioIndustry Alliance (ABIA), a new advocacy organization that seeks enabling conditions for biotechnology through sustainable, mutually beneficial Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) policies. Previously, she worked for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), where she was Associate Vice President for Intellectual Property, Middle East/Africa and South Asian Affairs. Prior to joining PhRMA in 1999, Finston served in the U.S. Foreign Service, specializing in intellectual property and international trade policy. She received two meritorious Honor Awards for work on bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations. From 1986 -1988, Finston served as a Motions Clerk working with active judges at the Federal Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, Illinois. She was admitted to practice before the Illinois Bar, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1986 with a joint J.D./M.P.P. degree and with a B.S. in Philosophy in 1982. Her recent article, "The Relevance of Genetic Resources to the Pharmaceutical IndustryThe Industry Viewpoint," appeared in the March 2005 Journal of World Intellectual Property.

Achieving Fairness in the Doha Development Round
Andrew Brown, Wellfleet, MA
Robert M. Stern, University of Michigan

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Andrew Brown and Robert M. Stern (2005) "Achieving Fairness in the Doha Development Round", Global Economy Journal: Vol. 5: No. 4, Article 23.

LINK

The question addressed in this article is how the fairness of the global trading system as embodied in the GATT/WTO is to be assessed. Opinions about what constitutes fairness differ widely, and there is surely no incontrovertible yardstick. But it should be possible to be clearer about the criteria that are appropriate and what they mean in more operational terms. Why fairness is a condition of the agreements among governments that form the global trading system is first discussed. It is then suggested that fairness can best be considered within the framework of two concepts: equality of opportunity and distributive equity. It is argued that the criterion of maximum economic efficiency is not a primary yardstick of fairness, and though it is relevant in choosing among alternative ways of realizing fairness, it is not without its own limitations. There is a discussion of what equality of opportunity and distributive equity mean when applied to the commitments that governments make in the global trading system. For this purpose, these commitments are divided into four categories: those relating directly to market access; those concerning supporting rules designed to prevent cheating in market access commitments or to facilitate trade flows; those relating to procedures for the settlement of disputes or the use of trade remedy measures; and those relating to governance of the system. Finally, some comments are offered about fairness in the Doha Development Round, focusing in particular on the central issue of market access.
Andrew G. Brown was formerly Director in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the United Nations. He was responsible for analysis of international economic and social issues, and for staff support of UN committees and expert groups. He served earlier as chief economist or economic advisor in governments of developing countries. He is the author of History of Multilateral Trade Cooperation since 1850 and co-author of papers on the global trading system.

Robert M. Stern is Professor of Economics and Public Policy (Emeritus) in the Department of Economics and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan.

US Embassy hosts Worldnet Dialogue on
"The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights"January 24, 2000
LINK

The Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy will host a Worldnet interactive Dialogue on "The Protection of Intellectual Property Rights" on Tuesday, January 25 from 4:00-5:00 p.m. The program will be held in the Public Affairs auditorium.

The Jordanian panel will include Dr. Bassam Talhouni, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Jordan and President of the Jordanian Society for the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights, and Ms. Raghda Kurdi Khatkhutha, Director General, Al Hyatt Pharmaceutical Company, Member of the Jordanian Association of Manufacturers of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Appliances, and a Member of the Amman Municipal Council.

Participants from Washington will be Ms. Susan Finston, Assistant Vice President for Intellectual Property and Middle-East/African Affairs of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PHARMA) and Mr. Ralph Oman, an Attorney at Dechert, Price and Rhodes. Ms. Finston previously served in the Department of State's Office of Intellectual Property and Competition; Mr. Oman is a Member of the Board of the U.S. Committee of the World Intellectual Property Organization.
* * * * *

Susan Finston: More on India and the EMR Applicat ion Process
Dehoney, Eleanor Eleanor.Dehoney@mail.house.gov
Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:19:39 -0500

I thought you might be interested in a letter Congressman Brown, Congressman
Berry and Congresswoman Emerson sent to the President regarding Executive
Order 13155.

January 24, 2001

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Bush:

We understand the pharmaceutical industry is lobbying for the
reversal of Executive Order 13155. This executive order provides a
framework for determining whether it is appropriate for the United States to
apply trade pressures to influence the intellectual property laws of
Sub-Saharan African countries, for cases in which the laws are intended to
expand access to HIV/AIDS drugs.

Executive Order 13155 marries two important principles: 1) the
United States should promote strong and appropriate intellectual property
protections; and 2) the United States should refrain from obstructing the
legitimate attempts of sovereign nations to combat HIV/AIDS and save their
citizens' lives.

The pharmaceutical industry has opposed this executive order from
the outset. Drugmakers have argued that this order is discriminatory and
that it undercuts our role in enforcing strong intellectual property
protections.

While Executive Order 13155 applies only to HIV/AIDS drugs and
medical technologies, there is ample reason to treat HIV/AIDS drugs as a
unique class of products. HIV/AIDS is destroying the economic and social
fabric of Sub-Saharan Africa. It has killed more than 11.5 million people
in that region, and more than 34 million are infected with the disease.
HIV/AIDS is making orphans of tens of thousands of children each year. The
epidemic in Sub-Saharan South Africa is a humanitarian crisis, and US
actions to secure the most restrictive of intellectual property schemes in
these nations mean human beings will become infected needlessly and die.

Executive Order 13155 does not undercut our role in enforcing strong
intellectual property protections. Under the order, the U.S. is to refrain
from intervening only if a sub-Saharan African nation "provides adequate and
effective intellectual property protection consistent with the Agreement on
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement)
referred to in the Uruguay Round Agreement Act." In other words, the U.S.
can step in if these nations breach the TRIPS agreement, but if their
actions are allowed under the TRIPS accord, then the U.S. should not
interfere.

Executive Order 13155 strikes a balance between the protection of
intellectual property and the urgent needs of a population in crisis. While
the prescription drug industry will no doubt pressure you to reverse this
order, we urge you to weigh the ethical and public health implications of
such an action against the inconsequential impact on drug industry profits.
Standing behind Executive Order 13155 is the right thing to do.

Sincerely,

SHERROD BROWN MARION BERRY JO ANN EMERSON
Member of Congress Member of Congress Member of Congress

From: James Love(SMTP:love@cptech.org)
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2001 1:39 PM
To: IP-Health list; pharm-policy
Subject: (Ip-health) Susan Finston: More on India and the EMR
Application Process

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: More on India and the EMR Application Process
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 13:22:54 -0500
From: "Susan Finston"
To:

Jamie, pls post the following:

Further to discussion of the availability of Exclusive Marketing Rights
(EMR) in India (as required by the WTO TRIPS Agreement), according to
the Minister for State in the Ministry of Commerce Dr. Raman Singh, in
answer to a question from the Parliament (Rajya Sabha): "3690
applications for patent have been filed in the mail box. No Exclusive
Marketing Rights have been granted since December, 1998 in respect of
applications for same."

Source: IDMA Bulletin XXI (36) 30th September 2000, p. 838

Please note that there was no process for applying for EMRs in India
prior to the end of 1998, as this was the subject of a protracted WTO
DSP.

Unfortunately, I do not have an electronic citation to the IDMA
Bulletin (IDMA stands for the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association),
and so only have a hard copy source.

Thanks,
yours,
Susan

Susan Kling Finston
Assistant Vice President
Intellectual Property and
Middle East/Africa Affairs
PhRMA

202-835-3492
202-835-3413 FAX
Ip-health mailing list
Ip-health@lists.essential.org
http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/ip-health

The global fake drugs industry is a very big business, with very serious consequences, therefore we should protect the interests of drug companies in maintaining drug security, shouldn't we?:

Chinese poultry injected with false vaccines

LINK

CHAO: Fake vaccines were used on 80% of the poulty in China¡¯s Heishan Country, contributing to the spread of bird flu. The report was first seen in Hong Kong newspaper Wenweipo and since confirmed with experts from China¡¯s Ministry of Agriculture and the Veterinary Institute in Harbin.

The false vaccines lack antibodies that would resist the infliction of bird flu, experts said.

Bird flu is a disease commonly seen among wild birds and has a long incubation period. But poultry, and especially chickens, die within hours after contracting the disease and pass it on at an alarming speed.

The fake vaccines are directly related to the spread of bird flu says a specialist from the Veterinary Institute in Harbin. Now he says the best opportunity to prevent the outbreak of the bird flu, through vaccination, has slipped by.

Bush's Eavesdropping, Abramoff's Deception, Delay's Bribes, Fake News and Secrecy: It's a Cultural Thing

Armstrong Williams: Education Propaganda, Payola, or Whatever You Call it, is Still False ADvertising and Political Misconduct