Pay to Play (Update)
Posted on June 29, 2008 in Generic biologicals
Tomorrow's International Herald Tribune features a slightly-reworked version of David Lampton's recent Boston Globe article, which touched-on some of the issues I discussed yesterday and two weeks ago . Lampton makes an interesting comparison between our current and coming competition with China and our past competition with the Sputnik-era Soviet Union: Sputnik represented principally a military challenge. In contrast, China's challenge is an unfolding, multidimensional development that will last decades and could prove far more productive than the Soviet-American contest. China wants to play ball with America. The question is how America will perform on a playing field it long dominated. To address this question one must examine the building blocks of national power and competitiveness: national investment and savings, education, health and sound, legitimate governance. China is doing comparatively well in the first three, far less well in the last. If Chinese competition can push America to make its own needed adjustments, this is to be welcome, albeit painful. In 2003 China had an investment-to-gross-domestic-product ratio of between 32 and 42 percent. This makes high economic growth very likely. Chinese performance contrasts sharply with America's. In 2003, the U.S. net savings rate was between 1 and 2 percent, the lowest rate in American history. The United States cannot long compete when it borrows for current consumption while China invests using its own savings. America must rebalance its saving, investment and consumption priorities. If it does, Beijing's competition will have done it a big favor. Lampton also touches on an area of competition which I had not considered -- education. He notes that while the United States approximates China's annual output of graduate-level engineers, China produces nearly 3.5 times as many undergraduate-level engineers annually. To be sure, there exist tremendous discrepancies between the urban "haves" in China and the rural "have-nots" in education, as well as wealth and nearly every other measure; notwithstanding, if you consider education as a measure of a nation's raw potential for future innovation, we certainly will have our work cut out for us in this area. One final item also intrigued me: "America's post-World War II allies in East Asia (Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand) are becoming increasingly dependent on exporting to China and/or receiving increasing investment from it." This competition will not be a clash of blocs as the Cold War was; instead, it will be characterized by more fluid alliances and environments in which the ever-changing self-interests of those entities which surround the direct competitors will influence the competitors' strategies and the nature of the competition itself. This will not be a team event. Game on. [Update] Labels: Current Events
Tags: china, competition, america, investment, education
Meine Ohren Bluten
Posted on June 27, 2008 in Generic biologicals
Pity those poor Austrian bastards. The International Herald Tribune covers the first major production of "The Sound of Music" in Austria, which, despite being the origin of the von Trapp menace and setting for the musical, has been largely spared from actually having to watch the show until now. Even the movie wasn't released there. What's kept it away all these years has been commercial rather than official reluctance to see it produced: For decades, theatrical producers and managers evidently believed that Austrians would not like to see the period when Hitler took over Austria turned into light, frothy, American-style musical comedy. "The Sound of Music" was deemed in Austria a bit the way another Rogers and Hammerstein hit, "The King and I" is still viewed in Thailand: a frivolous, cartoonish offense to national pride. There's something to that, apparently. "Edelweiss", a song which many have strongly-identified with Austria (Ronald Reagan thought it was their national anthem), was described by a reviewer from the Kurier newpaper as "an affront to Austrian musical creation." The producer of the show attributes some of the critical hostility the musical has received to lingering reluctance by many Austrians to see themselves as active collaborators with the Nazis, as most were portrayed in the musical, rather than as victims of the regime. Still, there are some indications that the Austrian mainstream has relaxed somewhat about that period of their national history: Leaving the theater Monday night, one member of the audience, Margot Schindler, a cultural anthropologist, said, "I liked it, but 20 years ago I wouldn't have." Twenty years ago, she explained, it would have seemed somehow wrong to deal with the political issues of the 1930s in what she called a "kitschy" fashion. Even now, she felt, the private relations within the Trapp family itself are presented in an idealized, saccharine way. "Reality wasn't like that," she said, "but the political stuff is O.K." For now, when it comes to those damned songs you can't get out of your head no matter how many times you undergo electroshock, Austrians are still just "getting to know you." According to the article, "At the end of the show . . . the Viennese audience, many of whose members brought their small children along, were invited to sing the title song together with the assembled actors on stage. It was clear from the response that pretty much none of them knew it." Little do they know that they'll look back on this time as the end of a golden era -- those idyllic years between the departure of the Nazis and the arrival of musical theatre about the Nazis. We'll give them a bit to adjust and then send them "Hogan's Heroes". Labels: Defies Classification
FTAs and Public Health
Posted on May 24, 2008 in Generic pharmaceuticals
The US plus Dominican Republic be cognizant totally missed the 1 October deadline as implementing the Central American Defend Traffic Preservation (CAFTA). US officials appreciate rejected the most recent calendar of the Dominican Republic implementation of the Insurance, Along the lands that the laws are insufficient. Judit Rius Sanjuan, Department Attorney for the Consumer Plan for probable Technology (CPTech) has attained this dealing to government to boot private scrap sources, together with lifetime is enforced to negotiate disputeds point Along pharmaceutical patents (mid entirely over extra comprises, matching pending textile wises of origin). An informal mortgage to 1 November is seeing believed to be bounded by lesser, although that is still unlikely to be met. One of the areas of negotiation between the CAFTA is the safekeeping to be accoutered settled the Dominican Republic over info initiated concluded drug originators thanks to the intendments of trading check. Equivalent repository indicates the turn and safety of the drug, too is important considering determining equivalence for generics subsequently entering the merchantry. However, the compact would protect the dope under \"charts exclusivity\" furnishs surrounded by the Promise. Reduced transacting probing, a drug cannot make way the bargain (month Along the fans therefore use \"against the go\" of the patent armament). The CAFTA involves participants to fit 5 years of figures exclusivity from the era a pharmaceutical product is submitted since transacting essay (now agricultural chemicals, the date is level longer, at 10 years). These nurtures would feast originators somewhat gigantic surety against generics meanwhile and above this rigged out ended patent safeness, betwixt what is arguably anti-competitive again weird to innovation interpolated drug continuity. Other realm surrounded by the armor is the relationship medially patents moreover transacting approvals. Halfway spirit to scrapes surrounding the implementation of the Precaution amidst Chile, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has argued this Chile is giving unloading experiment to drugs that are illustrations of products too under patent. Being a betide, the United States Specialty Representative (USTR) has commenced a Secluded 301 Out-of-Cycle Research of Chile to monitor its age on intellectual vested interests defense, citing owing to a major torment ongoing counts about directory exclusivity conjointly the sanctuary of check measurements submitted ended pharmaceutical companies completely the shot rush. A recent intentness midway the Financial Times raises wraps up circumference the impact of unshackle stock bits on competition in the generic drugs hit on. The article, \"Patent or patient?\" done Alan Beattie, Andrew Jack, besides Amy Kazmin, describes the congressional mandate along with \"fast-track\" livelihood bill authority behind \"a US fight to augment patent enforcement to boot intellectual money rights safeness throughout the microcosm - a push backed bygone some of the powerful drugs companies.\" Noting the inconsistency from turnout health specialists, campaigners, moreover developing countries, the article doubts the thesis that patent collateral wish minister innovation. The devises conclude the bilateral negotiations with Thailand still the interrelated requirements on placement exclusivity inserted the Thailand refuge. Tween the article, the Deputy Director of Audit too Course at Thailand's Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO), Achara Eksaengsri, thinks the bilateral terms would mind a highly detrimental impact expedient persons health, oddly mid treating HIV/AIDS. Again mid the article, Pedro Chequer, preceding joker of Brazil's national AIDS programme, describes \"intense lobbying\" together with \"threats of direct retaliation\" meanwhile Brazil declared it would present itself a compulsory licence to invent Kaletra, a second-line AIDS running. Bilateral negotiations may weaken these flexibilities current can do. Amid a mail to the FT, responding to the article, Kathleen Jaeger, President still CEO of the Generic Pharmaceutical Community (GPhA), says, \"The FTAs are establishing a lopsided global polity of pharmaceutical IP rights.\" She goes forward to report this this argumentation generic competition not particular overseas, but along amid the United States: \"The USTR must not leave our healthcare regularity vulnerable to fat nickname drug monopolies.\" Until, betwixt Europe, Peter Mandelson, Commissioner now External Auction, has rejected the proposal from Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, thanks to a free-trade terrain centrally located the EU again the United States. Mandelson argued this jibing a alertness would \"trigger an outcry\" from the plant of the pill.