Supporters

1984 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu signed the Philadelphia Consensus Statement on Thursday, joining the call for universities to take action. Tutu signed the PCS after meeting with University of after meeting with University of Michigan UAEM members.

You can read more about this important show of support below in the University of Michigan-UAEM press release.

Archbishop Tutu joins 9 other Nobel laureates in calling for change on our university campuses.

President Clinton was in New Haven for his 35th law school reunion, and spoke to a large hall of gathered alumni about America’s role in the world, including the importance of UAEM’s work on global health. President Clinton told the crowd: “I like [their work] because that is an example of how we turn good intentions into positive changes.” President Clinton’s comments represent just one of the many high profile endorsements UAEM has recently received--including nine Nobel Laureates and dozens of leaders in the fields of science, medicine, public health, law, and economics.

If you are a Yale alum who heard about UAEM through President Clinton’s speech, you can help make President Clinton’s vision a reality. Alumni are incredibly important to Yale University; please call on Yale to be a leader on access to medicines issues. Specifically...

To date, 9 Nobel prize winners have signed the Philadelphia Consensus Statement which calls on universities to take action by adopting policies that:

• Promote equal access to research.
• Promote research and development for neglected diseases.
• Measure research success according to impact on human welfare.

You can join with thousands of students, professor, global health luminaries and Nobel laureates by adding your voice to the call for universities to take action. Sign on now to the Philadelphia Consensus Statement.

UAEM is prominently featured on the Lancet Student in advance of the Week of Action, March 24. Check out the post at http://www.thelancetstudent.com/2008/03/20/access-to-essential-medicines-and-the-role-of-us-universities/.

Writing on the occassion of thee BIO conference in Boston and professor Jim Kim's National Day of Action address at Harvard, the Globe highlighted UAEM's proposals as one of the key ways to ensure that new biotechnology advances are "not just for the rich." The full text of the editorial is after the jump.

Other prominent National Day of Action coverage included:

• Dr. Buddhima Lokuge, U.S. Manager of MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, on Vermont Public Radio
• Hartford Courant on the Yale chapter's massive pill bottle sculpture

As the fight for affordable AIDS treatment comes to a head around the world, with litigation in India, a showdown in Thailand, and heated debate in the U.S. Congress, UAEM's growing national student movement erupted on nearly 50 campuses, demanding universities recognize their own role in the access crisis.

On September 28, Senator Leahy introduced legislation that would require all federally-funded research institutions to ensure that the drugs they develop are supplied to poor countries at the lowest possible cost: The Public Research in the Public Interest Act of 2006 (S. 4040). In recognition that universities have failed to act on an issue uniquely within their power, the legislation would condition federal research dollars on an institution's adoption of certain humanitarian licensing practices, which are in line with the policies that UAEM and others have urged universities to adopt voluntarily.

• S. 4040 Background Paper [pdf]

UAEM's Statement of Principles is included in the recently released report by the WHO's Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health (CIPIH; http://www.who.int/intellectualproperty, see section on Public Sector and University Patenting, p. 73). The Commission was formed in 2004 to study how current intellectual property regimes and other incentive and funding mechanisms are addressing the development of treatments for diseases that primarily affect the global poor.

See 'Improving Access to Medicines in Poor Countries: The Role of Universities'

Resolution: (A-05)

Introduced by: Emily R.