Re: India's IP policies and US lawmakers.

For a moment, if we put aside these analogies which clearly make no sense
and serve no purpose, but look at key observations, based on statistics or
statements which could actually form the basis of policies ?

http://health.india.com/diseases-conditions/one-million-new-cancer-cases-in-india-every-year/

*Quotes:*

Title says "One million new cancer cases in India every year" (and doesn't
even talk about people for whom the disease relapses, as it often does).

*In India, the number of new breast cancer cases is about 115,000 per year
and this is expected to rise to 250,000 new cases per year by 2015.

“There is serious research missing in cancer tracking that will help us get
more accurate figures. Unlike HIV-AIDS, we do not have a strong national
policy for cancer that focuses on prevention, disease management and
rehabilitation,” said R. Ranga Rao, director, medical oncology, BLK Cancer
Centre.

Experts believe that once the disease is notified by the government, the
picture of cancer prevalence could be clearer and help in drafting a proper
policy at a time when cancer is already in the ministry limelight as a
non-communicable disease.
*

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2008/cancerprofile.html

*Quotes:*
*
"Cancer rates are decreasing in the more prosperous countries, but in the
developing world ten people die of the disease every minute. Yet with the
affordable technologies - including radiotherapy - and strategies we have
today, half of these lives could be saved," he said. "We don´t need to wait
for a miracle - we need to commit ourselves to providing investment in
science and technology in developing countries."

The Director General´s appeal could not have been timelier. Earlier this
month a report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted that
by 2010 cancer will overtake heart disease to become the world´s number one
killer. Emerging nations, which are seeing increased use of tobacco and the
adoption of Western lifestyles, will bear the brunt of the crisis with up
to 70% of all new cases. To turn the tide, action must be taken now.*

So, clearly, cancer is not something that affects just a handful of
Indians. If one ever happens to visit the oncology ward of hospitals, the
queue-sizes outside is quite telling. Compare that to the queue size
outside 'General Medicine' (which typically treats diarrhea, cholera etc.),
isn't that much bigger.

Also, didn't the United States "steal" intellectual property in every way
possible before and during the WW-II ? Defection of "experts" and
"scientists", that are encouraged, engineered, orchestrated and executed
with the sole purpose of gaining access to technologies ranging from
submarine design, rocket propulsion, materials research in the field of
corrosion-resistance / high-temperature performance etc., are well known
and published.

Heck - for that matter -- fireworks, paper-making, metallurgy are sciences
and techniques that was copied from the east. And hey, who is going about
patenting Basmati and Turmeric ? Yes, this may boil down to capitalism vs
socialism or another ism - but when one is discussing policy making, how
can they avoid such discussions, are basically the fundamental basis of
social evolution, structuring and interaction.

Here's something from the Wiki-article on 'TRIPS Agreement', which serves
well the purpose of justifying / supporting and explaining the actions of
Supreme Court, more so the material that it links to (sustainable
development, artificial scarcity) :-*
**Criticism** *

*Since TRIPS came into force it has received a growing level of criticism
from developing countries<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_countries>,
academics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic>, and non-governmental
organizations <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization>.
Some of this criticism is against the WTO as a whole, but many advocates of
trade liberalization also regard TRIPS as bad policy (see, for example, Jagdish
Bhagwati <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdish_Bhagwati>'s In Defense of
Globalization for a discussion on the detrimental effect of TRIPS on access
to medicines in developing countries). TRIPS's wealth redistribution
effects (moving money from people in developing countries to copyright and
patent owners in developed countries) and its imposition of artificial
scarcity <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity> on the citizens
of countries that would otherwise have had weaker intellectual property
laws, are common bases for such criticisms.*
* *

*Peter Drahos <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drahos> writes that "It
was an accepted part of international commercial morality that states would
design domestic intellectual property law to suit their own economic
circumstances. States made sure that existing international intellectual
property agreements gave them plenty of latitude to do
so."[23]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement#cite_note-23>
*
* *

*Daniele Archibugi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniele_Archibugi> and Andrea
Filippetti<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andrea_Filippetti&action=edit&redlink=1>
[24] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement#cite_note-24> argue that
the importance of TRIPS in the process of generation and diffusion of
knowledge and innovation has been overestimated by both their supporters
and their detractors. Claude Henry and Joseph E.
Stiglitz<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_E._Stiglitz>
[25] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement#cite_note-25> argue that
the current intellectual property global regime may impede both innovation
and dissemination, and suggest reforms to foster the global dissemination
of innovation and sustainable
development<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development>
.*


Just to set the records straight, I am not anti-patent, but I am certainly
not in favour of patent-abuse, which BTW (i.e. the abuse part) is not
limited to trolls alone, but any form which leads to unjust or unfair
profiteering.



On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 5:47 AM, Kiritkumar Lathia <[email protected]>wrote:

> The twisted logic also implies that one should not sleep in any type of
> bed as majority die in bed, including in hospitals. It has been observed
> that procreation also happens mostly in beds with "social" (read socialist)
> activity and so creates population explosion - - these artifacts should be
> banned!
>
> :)
>
> Was the topic not highjacked and became OT by ranting about socialism vs
> capitalism vs. ...ism?
>
> On 1 July 2013 00:03, Kingsly John <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> +++ Ratnendra Pandey [2013-06-30 12:54:09]:
>>
>> > A far more number of people die every year in India for simple things
>> like
>> > dirty water or dirty air.
>> > India does not need to steal expensive IP  to save her people from
>> simple and
>> > avoidable deaths like those from simple diseases  like cholera,
>> diearreaha etc
>> > and from other simple causes like death by falling from overcrowded
>> trains in
>> > mumbai suburban system. As far as I can tell from my unscientific
>> observation,
>> > the number of people who could be saved by drugs from stolen IP are
>> very few
>> > (any idea how many patients die from cancer than from other waterborne
>> and
>> > airborne diseases)?
>>
>> Any idea how many people die in road accidents and in bathrooms around the
>> world compared to terrorist attacks on airlines?
>>
>> We should just give up on all security in airports, and spend all our
>> money
>> on better bathrooms and road safety.
>>
>> > But, you see, in socialist countries like India where government has to
>> > showcase what it is doing, revoking patents on cancer drugs is likely
>> to get
>> > more votes than saving thousands of people who die every year from
>> simple
>> > things like cholera.  It also stokes felling of nationalism when Indian
>> > government is seen as fighting a profit seeking American drug company.
>>
>> Clearly you have no clue what the Supreme Court judgement was about.
>> Glivac
>> was a cancer drug that had enjoyed patent protection for many years. What
>> the
>> SC ruled against was evergreening of the patent to prevent generics from
>> entering the market for many more years.
>>
>> From the wikipedia page about the main ingredient..
>>
>> <quote>In 2013, more than 100 cancer specialists published a letter in
>> Blood
>> saying that the prices of many new cancer drugs, including    imatinib,
>> is so
>> high that U.S. patients couldn't afford them, and that the level of
>> prices,
>> and profits, was so high as to be immoral. Signatories of the letter
>> included
>> Brian Drucker, Carlo Gambacorti-Asserini, and John Goldman, developers of
>> imatinib. In 2001, imatinib was priced at $30,000 a year, which was based
>> on the price of interferon, then the standard treatment, and would have
>> recouped the development costs in 2 years. After unexpectedly becoming a
>> blockbuster, its price was increased to $92,000 per year in 2012, with
>> annual
>> revenues of $4.7 billion. All its research and development costs were
>> covered
>> in the first $1 billion, and everything else was profit.^[39]^[40] Other
>> doctors have complained about the </quote>
>>
>> The very people who created the drug felt the company was overcharging
>> even
>> by western standards.
>>
>> > Cancer is never epidemic. At anytime it affects a very limited number of
>> > people.  A few cancer patients might be saved by these drugs. Not all
>> > patient will survive even with these drugs. So for the benefit of  a
>> very
>> > small minority of patient who were unfortunate enough to suffer from
>> > cancer, we are subjecting the rest of 1.2 billion Indians to moral
>> > corruption and unethical environment that comes from stolen IP or living
>> > off someone else's hardwork or money.  So much for the self-reliant
>> > Indians. Is eating stolen food or treating with stolen drugs
>> > self-reliance?
>>
>> You have been overly influenced by MAFIAA logic.
>>
>> Firstly IP violation is not theft. And nearly every major US company
>> including Microsoft and Apple are guilty of it and they get away with
>> barely
>> a slap on the wrist.
>>
>> And are you really lecturing the rest of the world on morality and ethics,
>> while supporting a company that raised the price of a life saving drug
>> from
>> $30k per annum to $92k per annum for no other reason than they could get
>> away
>> with it? (They had already recovered all sunk costs in two years.)
>>
>> And wrt living off someone else's hard work? The drug company has been
>> making
>> billions of dollars in profit every single year for over a decade now.
>> What
>> percentage of that money was actually paid to the inventors of the drug
>> who
>> definitely did all the hard work?
>>
>>
>> > But, the damage to Indian psyche and character caused by stolen IP is
>> far more
>> > than the benefit that might come from it. I have not heard of anyone
>> attaining
>> > wealth or prosperity from robbery or stealing. Karma, good or bad,
>> always
>> > catches up.
>>
>> There's a certain country that was built by stealing nearly a whole
>> continent worth of land by killing the bulk of the native people,
>> (including
>> by spreading incurable diseases!) and restrictring them to tiny
>> settlements.
>> And then spent another hundred+ years enslaving another set of people and
>> living off their hard work without paying them a single cent. And
>> considering
>> they are one of the most wealthy and prosperous nation on the planet...
>>  you
>> are clearly wrong.
>>
>> > When I was a small child, I was raised with an idea that when wealth is
>> > lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost;  and when
>> > character is lost, everything is lost.
>>
>> If you really believe in that, these billion dollar companies have lost
>> absolutely nothing! So there's no reason for you or anyone get all butt
>> hurt
>> about the SC judgement.
>>
>> > We will never be independent, innovative, and original so long as we are
>> > encouraging unethical short cuts.  Not being able to stand on our feet
>> is
>> > far more  damaging to India than anything else.
>>
>> Au contraire, we are truly independent when we can stand up for what is
>> right
>> and good for us(and the world at large) and not meekly bend over to
>> satisfy
>> the whims/greed of a tiny minority of super rich
>> countries/corporations/people.
>>
>> Kingsly
>>
>> --
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>      Kingsly At Users Dot SourceForge Dot Net  -- http://kingsly.org/
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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-- 
regards,
Banibrata
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bdutta
http://twitter.com/edgeliving

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