Peter Suber reports that the Wikimedia Foundation is hosting a Wikimedia Open Access chat this Sunday, December 17. From the wiki-based announcement:

The open access movement is set to liberate scientific publishing. Science is contingent upon the free exchange of ideas; global communication networks enable it. Yet, in traditional publishing, copyright law is used to impede the distribution of even the most relevant scientific findings. Pioneering open access publishers such as the Public Library of Science and BioMed Central publish their findings under Creative Commons licenses — specifically, licenses which permit free distribution, modification, and even commercial use.These are the same principles of free content followed by the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia and its sister projects. All Wikimedia project content is freely licensed, with the exception of fair use images….

What are the synergies between those two movements? This is what we want to explore in a moderated dialogue. Specifically:

• Which open access licenses are compatible with Wikimedia content?
• What types of open access content are potentially relevant to Wikimedia projects?
• Which file formats, feeds and protocols should be used?
• How can we make sure that relevant content is detected and used?
• How could Wikimedia’s reliability and accuracy potentially benefit from the open access community?
• Beyond Wikimedia, where do wikis as tools fit in the open access movement?

We will meet on Sunday, December 17, 21:00 UTC (time conversion). The chat is set to have an official duration of 2 hours; after that, people will of course continue to be able to mingle. The chat will be moderated by initiator Erik Möller, who is a member of the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation….

For more connection details, see the rest of the announcement.

From: Open Access News

Jamie Love’s letter to the World Health Organisation asking for an overhaul of the Essential Medicines List (EDL). He points out that using cost as a determinant for inclusion in the list is a problemetic way to determine if a medicine is “essential”. It turns out that only 14 (12 on the core list and 2 on the complimentary list) of the 312 medicines on the list are protected by patents that prevent production of cheaper generic versions. While some argue that this indicates that patents are in fact not preventing the poor from accessing “essential medicines”, a closer look reveals that the opposite is the case. Since price is one factor that determines if a medicine is included in the list, it is the premium that consumers pay for patented medicines that keeps them out of the list – regardless if they are “essential” from a health perspective or not. Not a single patent protected anti-cancer drug made it onto the core list – not essential enough?

Since developing countries enjoy some flexibility under the current TRIPs regime to address their urgent health-care needs, the WHO would be well advised to compile a list of truly “essential” medicines, which could then be procured affordably through the use of compulsory licensing and generic substitutes – at a much lower cost.

Full letter is at the cptech.org website.

The intent of the Essential Medicines List (EDL) is to present “a list of minimum medicine needs for a basic health care system, listing the most efficacious, safe and cost-effective medicines for priority conditions,” where priority diseases themselves are identified in part on the basis of the potential for cost-effective treatment. Given that countries are free to use various means, such as compulsory licenses, to increase access to medical products that can improve the public health, it is appropriate to reassess the role that cost – especially as reflected under current patent medicine pricing regimes – plays in this evaluation.

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The existence of a WHO “Essential Medicines List” which clearly does not contain many truly essential medicines may be confusing for public health officials and others and provide rhetorical fodder to those who oppose intellectual property flexibilities for health.

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Patented medicines currently available only at prohibitive prices may nonetheless offer the “potential for cost-effective treatment” as countries have the opportunity to legally produce or import generic
versions. More critical to the evaluation of cost effectiveness under the emerging system is the true marginal cost of production, which bears little or no relationship to the market price in developed countries.

We believe that it is more appropriate that the Essential Medicines List reflect the opportunity that many countries have to obtain currently patented drugs at generic prices by assessing cost-effectiveness not only on the basis of current market prices, but also on the basis of potential generic prices if countries were to avail themselves of their right to exercise TRIPS flexibilities, including the granting of compulsory licenses. Developing countries in particular might stand to benefit from a model WHO Essential Medicines List that does not exclude essential patented medicines by ignoring the potential that those drugs could be obtained more cheaply. A welcome side-effect of this change would be an “Essential Medicines List" that more fully reflects the range of truly essential medicines, where essential reflects both the need for treatments and the costs of meeting those needs unburdened by patent rents.

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