Asbestos poisons World Trade Organization atmosphere.

In September 2000, a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel published its findings in the dispute between Canada and the European Union/France over France's ban on the import and use of chrysotile (white asbestos). The panel upheld the French ban, established that the use of chrysotile is a health risk and the idea of "controlled use" a fallacy, and used (for the first time) an exception clause in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that permits trade-restrictive measures to protect human life or health. At the same time, the panel concluded that the French ban violated international trade laws by treating chrysotile products less favorably than domestically produced alternatives. Some WTO watchers believe that with asbestos as the precedent for bans on toxic substances, the regulation of other, much less well-established, toxic exposures could prove much more difficult. Now the French ban has been upheld, chrysotile producers will increasingly target developing countries. Canada is appealing the WTO decision.     

WTO confidential: the case of asbestos. World Trade Organization.

The World Trade Organization (WTO), created in 1995, adjudicates "trade disputes" between member nations in cases with great human rights, cultural, environmental, and public health significance. Throughout the process of dispute resolution and even after a case is concluded, very little of what happens is made accessible to the public. However, it is one thing to criticize the WTO for its lack of transparency from outside the process, and another to critically examine what was withheld from disclosure and what dangers that presents. This is the inside story from a scientific adviser to one of the parties in a WTO case, analyzing what happened from a public health point of view. This analysis concludes that the public health justification of banning asbestos was accepted in the end by the economists at the WTO, despite the WTO's bias in favoring the party (Canada) making the free trade challenge (to public health legislation, in this case) in numerous stages of the process, despite the WTO's utter lack of expertise in science, medicine, engineering, and public health, and despite important erroneous statements made to the WTO under the cover of confidentiality. Despite its result, this case illustrates that the WTO's threat to national sovereignty could never withstand the light of day, that the people of the world would reject this dangerous free trade fundamentalism if the limitations and dangers of the process were open for all to see.     

Medical research and the pharmaceutical industry. Uneasy bedfellows or a prenuptial agreement?]

Recent publications in medical journals and the media seem to indicate that there are a number of major problems in the relationship between researchers and the pharmaceutical sector. Results of research allegedly are influenced or manipulated, the right to publish the results are taken away from the researchers, and all this for money. The underlying data do not seem to indicate that this is a very common problem, but rather a generalisation of incidents. To efficiently develop medicines in future requires an ever-growing amount of academic know-how that these companies simply lack; in modern pharmaceutical development there are many opportunities to connect academic and industrial research programmes, resulting in synergy rather than an academic sell-out. All parties concerned should make transparent and clear agreements.     

Implications of the World Trade Organization in combating non-communicable diseases

The World Health Organization (WHO) has proposed a number of strategies to combat non-communicable diseases such as cancers, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes by targeting the risk factors of tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol and poor diet. A number of the domestic regulatory responses contemplated by WHO and individual countries have the potential to restrict or distort trade, raising the question of whether they are consistent with the obligations imposed on Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This article demonstrates that WTO rules do limit Members’ flexibility in implementing public health measures to address these diseases. However, the focus of WTO provisions on preventing discrimination against or between imports and the exceptions incorporated in various WTO agreements leave sufficient scope for Members to design carefully directed measures to achieve genuine public health goals while minimizing negative effects on international trade.     

加入WTO对我国医院的影响

加入世界贸易组织之后会对我国国内医院带来五个方面影响：（1）棒我国医院带来一定冲击；（2）带来国内医疗市场扩大的积极效果；（3）强化竞争，增强医疗活力；（4）参与世界贸易规则制定，维护医院自身利益；（5）优化卫生资源配置。     

医院适应WTO改革的管理对策

为探讨加入WTO后医院适应形势所进行相应的改革，本阐述了加入WTO后医疗市场所面临的变革趋势，以市场为导向，创新为动力所采取的对策。     

Perspectives on the pharmaceutical industry

This paper seeks to provide an economic perspective on the pharmaceutical industry, which has come under increasing criticism on a number of issues. In the main, that criticism amounts to a rather ineffective flailing at the supply side of the market for pharmaceutical products-much of it based on inaccurate perceptions-when a more productive policy would be to strengthen the hitherto weak and poorly informed demand side of the market.     

Patently obvious: a public health analysis of pharmaceutical industry statements on the Trans-Pacific Partnership international trade agreement

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is a regional trade agreement being negotiated by 12 countries, including New Zealand and the United States of America (USA). The patent-holding pharmaceutical industry (the Industry) has lobbied for enhanced intellectual property protections and rules affecting pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement in the TPPA. These provisions would likely reduce access to affordable medicines. This paper reports on a study exploring how the Industry has used language to frame the TPPA in an effort to influence opinion and exert leverage. We undertook a thematic analysis of the language used in publicly available statements about the TPPA from the Industry’s national associations in the USA and New Zealand. Data included press releases, submissions and other statements dated 2008–2013. The Industry framed the TPPA as contributing to the public good. The TPPA was portrayed as redressing inequitable pharmaceutical policies, which limit people’s access to new medicines. Further, the TPPA was constructed as the route to economic growth for the USA and ultimately for all TPPA countries, through increased intellectual property protection for the pharmaceutical industry. This framing obscured tensions between Industry interests and public health goals. The Industry remained silent on the issue of affordability, a key dimension of equitable pharmaceutical access. The use of rhetoric, such as ‘win-win outcomes’ (for TPPA countries and the Industry), hid the vested economic interests of the Industry in the TPPA. Understanding the Industry’s framing of issues can assist public health advocates in challenging prevailing discourses and exposing vested interests.     

WTO与妇幼保健院市场创新

本文概述了北京市朝阳区妇幼保健院市场创新的现状 ,分析了加入 WTO后所面临的挑战 ,提出了应对 WTO的 5点措施     

Political context of the World Health Organization: sugar industry threatens to scupper the WHO.

The Sugar Association, representing the U.S. sugar industry, is highly critical of a WHO report on guidelines for healthy eating, which suggests that sugar should account for no more than 10 percent of a healthy diet. The association has demanded that Congress end its funding of the World Health Organization unless the WHO withdraws the guidelines, and the association and six other big food industry groups have also asked the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to use his influence to get the WHO report withdrawn. The WHO strongly rejects the sugar lobby's criticisms.     

Globalization and the pharmaceutical industry revisited.

This survey of the pharmaceutical industry at the beginning of the 21st century updates some of the information provided in Claudio Tarabusi and Graham Vickery's survey, "Globalization in the Pharmaceutical Industry," published in the International Journal of Health Services in 1998, which was largely based on data up to 1993. However, the purpose of the present article differs from that of Tarabusi and Vickery, which covered a wide range of aspects of the industry relevant to globalization but did not explicitly address the question of the extent to which the industry could be described as globalized. After looking at the industry in some detail, the author directly confronts the question of the appropriateness of the use of the term "globalization" for characterizing the directions in which the pharmaceutical industry has been moving.     

Caught in the middle: should the World Trade Organization settle environmental disputes?

Since its inception in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has arbitrated trade disputes between its members in part by deciding whether unilateral actions by its 134 member nations such as trade bans or restrictions violate international free trade rules and authorizing penalties against members that are found to be noncompliant with such rules. The WTO is criticized by those who believe its emphasis on free trade undermines national environmental and public health protection efforts. Recent disputes over the importation of hormone-treated beef and genetically modified crops have focused attention on how the WTO arbitrates disputes having environmental and public health implications and sparked criticisms as to whether the organization is qualified to do so.