Photo: Courtesy of Carl Feldbaum | |
Financiers and biotechnology business leaders suspended their networking for a few minutes at the BIO 2002 annual convention in Toronto as Carl Feldbaum, chairman of the powerful US Biotechnology Industry Organization, urged them to cooperate with their competitors and assist the poor.
Feldbaum's 10-point Biotechnology Foreign Policy,1 introduced over a sumptuous lunch, would provide appropriate and affordable vaccines and drugs for developing countries and ensure the protection of intellectual property while promoting free trade. "Our goal must be to ensure the widest possible dissemination of biotechnology's benefits while respecting the diversity of the world's nations and peoples," Feldbaum said in his plenary address to the annual convention in June. The convention provided companies access to management assistance and financing. "For a model, I looked to President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, which articulated his international goals after the carnage of World War...