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India Alters Patent Law
India, a major source of inexpensive AIDS drugs, passed a new patent law yesterday that groups providing drugs to the world's poorest patients fear will choke off their supply of new treatments.
The new law, amending India's 1970 Patent Act, affects everything from electronics to software to medicines, and has been expected for years as a condition for India to join the World Trade Organization.
But because millions of poor people in India and elsewhere -- including by some estimates half the AIDS patients in the Third World -- rely on India's generic drug industry, lobbyists for multinational drug companies as well as activists fighting for cheap drugs had descended on New Delhi to try to influence the outcome.
The law, which passed by a voice vote in Parliament's upper house this week after days of wrangling over amendments in the lower house, was in the end not as restrictive as the drug activists had feared.
All the generic drugs already approved in India can still be sold, though sellers must now pay licensing fees. There are also provisions allowing companies that make generics to copy drugs in the future. But there are relatively tough criteria for such copying, and activists predicted that prices for newly invented drugs will be much higher, because drug makers will have the same 20-year patent monopolies as they have in the West.
In addition, it is unclear whether makers of generic drugs in other countries, like Brazil, China and Thailand, will fill any increasing demand for cheaper medicines. But India's governing Congress Party, which sponsored the bill, disputed the contention that prices would soar.
All Western countries grant ''product patents'' on new inventions. Since 1970, India has granted ''process patents,'' which allow another inventor to patent the same product as long as it was created by a novel process. In pharmaceuticals, that has meant that a tiny tweak in the synthesis of a molecule yields a new patent. Several companies can produce the same drug, creating competition that drives down prices.
Before 1970, India's patent laws came from its colonial days, and it had some of the world's highest drug prices. Process patents on drugs, fertilizers and pesticides have extended life expectancy and ended regular famines.
Some multinationals had refused to invest in India without stronger patent protection, and Indian companies that do original research were also eager for it.
Under the new law, a maker of generics can apply to copy a patented drug, but only after it has been marketed for three years. In addition, the patent owner can object.
Also, the generic's maker must pay a ''reasonable'' royalty, although the law does not define reasonable. If a drug is desperately needed, the new law allows the government to declare an emergency and cancel its patent India had never declared such an emergency, and for years resisted admitting that it had an AIDS problem.
Most governments, including the United States, have such patent powers, though they use them sparingly. When the Bush administration thought it needed huge supplies of the expensive antibiotic Cipro during the 2001 anthrax scare, it threatened to cancel Bayer's patent if the company did not cut its price. Other countries permit generic versions of AIDS drugs, but none have been as aggressive as Indian companies about getting them approved by the World Health Organization and exporting them. Generics made by companies in Brazil go mostly to Brazilians. China makes generics, but also has problems with counterfeiting and, like India, is under pressure to comply with W.T.O. rules.
The Indian bill was amended to prevent ''evergreening,'' in which patent owners try to get a new 20-year monopoly by patenting a variant on the same molecule. To win a new patent, the applicant will have to prove the variant works better.
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Alfa Wants Stake in Turkcell
Representatives Alfa Telecom, a Russian mobile phone investment company, said on Thursday that it planned to outbid its Nordic rival TeliaSonera for a stake in Turkey's largest cell network, Turkcell.
Representatives of TeliaSonera a week ago said it had agreed to pay $3.1 billion for a 27 percent stake in Turkcell, which would raise the Nordic phone company's stake to a controlling 64.3 percent.
On Thursday, Alfa said that it had topped that offer, but few details were available. Kirill Babaev, vice president for external affairs at Moscow-based Alfa, confirmed the offer in an interview by telephone but would not offer further details. Michael Kongstad, spokesman for Stockholm-based TeliaSonera, said his company believed its bid would prevail because the Swedish telecommunications carrier, as a major investor in Turkcell, has the right of first refusal on all new shares.
But because TeliaSonera is bidding for 64.3 percent of Turkcell's shares, not all of them, the Swedish company needs approval from Turkey's capital markets board regulator, which usually requires companies acquiring majority control to buy out all minority shareholders.
Kongstad said TeliaSonera had asked for an exception to this rule and was confident regulators would allow their bid to go through by the end of June.
The dispute over Turkcell came three weeks after TeliaSonera and Alfa Telecom, part of Russia's Alfa finance group, intensified their scuffling over ownership in MegaFon, Russia's No. 3 mobile network operator.
Alfa claims that it still owns its 25.1 percent stake in MegaFon. TeliaSonera, in its March 9 press release, said the stake had been purchased by IPOC International Growth Fund, a fund owned by Jeffrey Galmond, a Danish lawyer.
UK DNA Profiling of Babies Rejected
Proposals for a national scheme to take DNA profiles of every baby born in the UK have been rejected by genetics experts.
The Human Genetics Commission (HGC) and the National Screening Committee had been asked to assess the pros and cons of a baby profiling scheme.
They concluded it would not be cost effective, and posed ethical problems.
Supporters of baby profiling say it could help to predict the likelihood of developing diseases in later life.
It its report to ministers, the HCG recommended that the issue be re-examined in five years. It said at present it was not likely to be publicly affordable - but developing technology should eventually bring costs down. Should a national scheme go ahead, then vigorous safeguards would be needed to protect confidentiality, and minimise the risk of discrimination, the HCG said.
However, it said it would be very difficult to ensure that information would not be misused. There were also concerns about if and how a child would be informed if found to be at risk of disease.
The HGC accepted that baby profiling could offer possible benefits, such as enabling doctors to plan medical treatment in advance, and to advise those at risk how best to modify their lifestyles.
There could also be more accurate targeting of drugs for people with genetic disorders. But it warned that the link between genetics and health outcomes was not always clear - and called for more research into the issue. It also warned that regulation might be needed in the rapidly developing commercial sector, where organizations were beginning to consider offering genetic profiling on an individual basis.
Great Extinction Came in Phases
A joint UK-Chinese team tell Nature magazine the disaster that befell the planet 250 million years ago must have happened in phases.
Their conclusion is based on the abundance of "organic fossils" found in rocks at Meishan in southern China., which suggest there were at least two episodes to the mass die-off that saw up to 95% of life forms disappear.
Some scientists have proposed the idea that the "great dying" at the boundary of the Permian and Triassic Periods could have occurred quite abruptly - the result of environmental changes brought on by the impact of a giant space rock. It is a similar argument to the one put forward to explain the demise of the dinosaurs at the much later date of 65 million years ago.
A geological structure, known as the Bedout High, in the seabed off what is now Australia, has even been suggested as the possible crater remains from the impactor. But it is an argument that has struggled to find favor. The prevailing theory is that several factors - including supervolcanism and extensive climate warming - combined over thousands of years to strangle the planet's biodiversity.
Earth may well have been hit by extraterrestrial objects, but it is unlikely there was some killer punch from space. The new data from China supports this view. It is based on the traces left in rocks by cyanobacteria.
These photosynthetic, mostly single-celled organisms existed in vast blooms in the Permian oceans. They are one of the major groups of phytoplankton, which form the basis of the marine food chain. However, the phytoplankton not eaten by higher organisms would have fallen to the seafloor over time to be incorporated into the sedimentary rocks we see today. And chemical components in their cell membranes have left telltale signs of their past existence. Specifically, a lipid molecule, known as 2-methylhopane, has left ring structures in the Meishan rock.
The research team sees two peaks of abundance in the Chinese rocks which are believed to indicate periods immediately following biotic crises in the oceans - times when the collapse of higher marine lifeforms allowed the cyanobacteria populations to boom.
The Permian-Triassic mass extinction killed off about 95% of all marine species and about three-quarters of all land families. It is the boundary at which the famous water-dwelling arthropods known as the trilobites were wiped out. The Permian saw the creation of the Pangean supercontinent, and the geological evidence suggests this landmass experienced huge volcanic turmoil.
The Siberian Traps were built during the period - millions of cubic kilometers of basalt lavas were spilled on to the Earth's surface.
