Waxman Swipes at Novartis
1 CommentBy Ed Silverman // February 13th, 2007 // 5:59 pm
He sent a four-page letter to Daniel Vasella a few hours ago about the drugmaker’s patent dispute in India over Gleevec, and accuses Novartis of attempting “to influence domestic Indian law” in a way that “could have a severe impact on worldwide access to medicines.”
He pokes Vasella by saying “the grounds for the Novartis challenge are questionable,” and later concludes by arguing that “Novartis and its colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry should respect countries’ rights to take measures that balance the protection of innovation and the promotion of public health. I urge you to reconsider your position in this case.”
As a practical matter, this is unlikely to change anything halfway across the world. But it may raise Waxman’s standing a wee bit among a growing number of people who are angry at Novartis. As for Vasella, well, he may not ignore Waxman, but you know what he’ll say.
[tags]Daniel Vasella, Henry Waxman, India, Novartis, Patents[/tags]
he knows
One wonders how much the blogging itself can do to influence such powerful companies and such powerful men as Dr. Vasella and many others are? We keep commenting, protesting, bithcing you name it. How many people do read these and judging by comments on issues that are quite rare and few, not too many. The big pharma is watching these via their security ofices (Novartis has BPO that is responsible for the security and related issues) that are populated by the best security men and maybe some women recruted from the liks of FBI, Scotland Yard and maybe even the KGB (the new version). These personell know what they are doing and get paid very wel for itl, making some real money after the excellent training they got working for their goverments. So they know what is going on, but are not worried for they are basically not afraid of anything or anyone. The power they think they have is their guaranty for this posture. The only way they could be brought down is via court of law in countries where they have strong enough laws to stand up to them. Of course the evidence of misconduct must be strong and unbeatable by the stable of top lawyers they employ.
So you need many more whistleblowers who are smart enough to have collected the hard evidence and are on the side of decency and are ready to risk it all. The more we educate the public about these issues and what they can do about them, our chances are increasing to beat the big pahrma. If they were woried that every employee is a potential whistleblower and is watching what is going on in any of the big pharma co. and collecting the evidence they would think differently and change the power posture and join the rest of the human race.
Lets see what will happen in India. As someone already commented Novartis maybe in a lose, lose situation. As result they may chose to go for solution that gives them more profit and share holders’ value. After all is it not what your business is all abut Dr. Vasella?