Nothing could be a greater risk to public health!
Sovereign states currently set their own health care strategies and work in partnership with private industries, university researchers and scientists to discover new medicine to save and extend literally billions of lives around the world. Private companies, governments and educational institutions around the world invent new medicine through patent systems that create incentives for investment in research. This system has produced the largest investments in medical research in the history of the world, which have in turn created the greatest period of medical advancement in the history of the world, advances that have helped to more than double worldwide life expectancy over the last century.
But now a working group at the United Nations is promoting an elitist, collectivist agenda that threatens national sovereignty and support for science. This U.N. working group run by non-scientific diplomats in Geneva has proposed a Global Strategy and Plan of Action that would undermine pharmaceutical research in nations around the world by imposing new rules on R&D decisions that are currently made by sovereign states in accordance with their national health programs.
We urge you to take immediate steps to stop this working group's assault on sovereignty and medical innovation.
Research and development for health care should be determined by those who actually discover new medicine, new treatments, and have contributed to extraordinary advancements in science and medicine. These advancements depend on strong protection of intellectual property rights and coordination between public and private sector researchers and scientists.
Diplomats in Switzerland should not undermine our national health strategies.
Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary General of the United Nations
Dr. Margaret Chan
Director-General of the World Health Organization