Puncturing the conference vacuum

One of the quirks of APSA is that even though everyone -- well, almost everyone -- attending the conference is interested in current events, during the four days the conference is in progress people exist in a black hole for news. Free copies of the New York Times are available for participants, but few attendees have the time to peruse the news in the same way. However, my blogger training permitted me to notice that the U.S. was cutting a deal on generic medicines in advance of the Cancun trade talks. While the deal hasn't been officially sealed yet, it looks like it will. In the short term, this is double good news. It will benefit those in developing countries and suffering from AIDS or other diseases. It's also a boon to the trade talks and a signal that the U.S. is committed to completing the Doha round on time. Make no mistake, however -- in the long term, there are potential costs. If pharmaceutical firms believe than any drug developed for a disease that is widespread in the developing world will have poor intellectual property rights protection, it will affect their research and development trajectories, and not in a good way. NGOs are bitching that the deal does not go far enough, as are African activists. That actually makes me feel better, in thinking that the deal will not gut property rights so much that it will blunt new drug research.