Brazil Breaks Patent to Make AIDS Drug

Andy Tai writes: "In this CNN story, Brazil decides to break a patent over an AIDS drug for public benefits. Brazil will produce the drug domestically without agreements with patent holder, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche. Brazil's efforts to fight AIDS have been praised internationally, and it successfully prevented the US Government from bringing complaints in the WTO on behalf of the drugs industry. This may set an important example that public needs justify the disregard of patent protection." There's another article in the Boston Globe about the decision.

Re:Example?

[Erasmus Darwin]

"for example, it's taken for granted that people *will* work without compensation on many things, e.g. Open Source software."

Announcing the release of OpenAntiHystX 0.2b:

BECAUSE THE DRUG IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE DRUG, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE DRUG "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE DRUG IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE DRUG PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY MEDICAL TREATMENT OR FUNERAL COSTS.

What's new in 0.2b:

• Removed a protein group that caused some people who're allergic to peanuts to enter anaphylactic shock, with potentially lethal consequences. Thanks to the widow of Jerry Henderson for reporting this.
• The specified manufacturing process was resulting in residual benzene being left in approximately 4% of the pills in each batch. Temporary workaround applied (testing each pill) until we can come up with a permanent fix.
• I've set up a paypal account so people can contribute to the FDA approval cost fund. It's still a long way off, but we should probably start saving up now.
• I've had several people mail me about abdominal cramps. MAKE SURE YOU'RE USING THE LATEST VERSION. The abdominal cramp issue was fixed, along with several other bugs, back in release 0.2a.
• After several round-table discussions with both RMS and the FDA, we've been able to agree that the licensing clause requiring development forks to use a substantially different name (so as to avoid consumer confusion) is acceptable within the Free Drug tenets.