Bernie Sanders accuses US Trade Rep of intimidating Colombia over Novartis patent

[Judi Lynn]

Source: StatNews

Bernie Sanders accuses US Trade Rep of intimidating Colombia over Novartis patent
By Ed Silverman @Pharmalot

May 26, 2016

Bernie Sanders is the latest lawmaker to chastise United States Trade Representative Michael Froman for pressuring Colombia not to sidestep a patent on a Novartis drug.

In a letter sent Thursday, the presidential aspirant and Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio, wrote that they find it “unconscionable” that Froman’s staff would attempt to “intimidate” Colombian officials for planning to issue a compulsory license for the Gleevec cancer medicine. And they warn that such actions suggest the US is “elevating corporate profits over public health priorities.”

Earlier this month, staff from both the US Senate Finance Committee and the US Trade Rep’s Office met with Colombian embassy officials in Washington D.C., and told them that issuing such a license might jeopardize $450 million in US funding for a peace effort, as well as backing for a free-trade treaty. The meetings were described in letters that embassy officials sent to Colombian government ministers.

A country can issue a license so that a generic company can make a brand-name medicine without the consent of the company holding a patent. And Colombia Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria plans this step because it is in “the public interest,” since Novartis has refused to negotiate a lower price and won an exclusive patent on one of two forms of the drug, precluding competition.

Read more: https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/05/26/bernie-sanders-novartis-patent/

[truedelphi]

1. Quick, quick: someone at the DNC give Sanders his talking points!

Above all else, Sen Sanders, never ever attempt to ruin things for Big Pharma.

[bjobotts]

2. You mean DWS..DNC chair. Bernie tries to prevent blackmail for medicalprofiteering & u Bitch

about it. What is wrong with you?

[truedelphi]

3. I am being satirical. What is wrong with you?

Or when you read Orwell, did you really think there was a country with talking pigs and cows and chickens?

[Omaha Steve]

6. Use this from the additional smile list

[lark]

4. Good for Bernie and Brown.

So glad there are still people who realize that human beings have value over and above being profit machines for the 1%. Sad that Obama is so corporatist and pro big pharma that he allows this heinous pressure on Columbia to continue.

[AzDar]

5. This man... ALWAYS doing the work of the angels.