MONOPOLY AND ANTI-MONOPOLY:

MEDICINE AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN:

Considerable controversy has surrounded the idea of "intellectual property rights" in the so-called information age. This sort of monopoly is an obvious one, promoted by private interests, already powerful, and protected and advanced by government. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of instances have arisen in past years where it was obvious that restricted access to information was detrimental to the public good, and campaigns demanding that free access, especially to research funded by public money, have been prominent in their opposition to restricted access, whether it be to genome sequences or to published scientific papers. See The Union for the Public Domain and IP Watch for more on this issue. Also the Against Monopoly site in our links section.

Down Toronto way there will be a panel discussion tomorrow, sponsored by Open Medicine, Canada's independent open source online medical journal. Here's the announcement. catch it if you can for some interesting ideas.

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Open Medicine presents:

The power of the public domain:

Can improving access to information transform global health?:

A panel discussion with: James Orbinski, Gavin Yamey & James Maskalyk

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

6:30 pm

Free (Donations welcome)

Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building

University of Toronto

144 College Street

Room B150

James Orbinski, MD, MA

James Orbinski is an associate professor at the University of Toronto and author of the national bestseller An Imperfect Offering. He was the International President of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in 1999 when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and co-founded Dignitas International, an organization focused on community-based care and prevention of HIV in the developing world.

James Maskalyk, MD

James Maskalyk is an associate editor of Open Medicine. He practises emergency medicine and is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. He is the author of the newly published book Six Months in Sudan, which chronicles his humanitarian work with Médecins sans Frontières in 2007.

Gavin Yamey, MD

Gavin Yamey is a senior editor of PLoS Medicine and consulting editor to PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He has written extensively on global health, and has helped to train medical editors at workshops in Barcelona and Addis Ababa. He is on the editorial board of Health and Human Rights and was recently awarded a 2009 Kaiser Foundation Mini-Fellowship in Global Health Reporting.

For more information, please visit OpenMedicine.ca . You can also follow Open Medicine via identi.ca or twitter (openmedicine)

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