Compulsory Licensing of Patented Pharmaceutical Inventions: Evaluating the Options

In this Comment, the author traces the relevant legislative history pertaining to compulsory licensing of patented pharmaceuticals from the TRIPS Agreement of 1994 to the 2003 waiver to, and later proposed amendment of, article 31, which enables poor countries to obtain needed medicines from other countries that possess manufacturing capacity. The Comment then evaluates recent, controversial uses of the relevant legislative machinery as viewed from different critical perspectives. The Comment shows how developing countries seeking access to esential medicines can collaborate in ways that would avoid undermining incentives to innovation and other social costs attributed to compulsory licensing. It ends by defending the legality of recent measures taken to promote public health in developing countries, and by reminding developed countries that unilateral retaliation against such measures is demonstrably illegal under WTO foundational law and jurisprudence

Phylogenetic Relationships of the Enigmatic Malesian Fern Thylacopteris (Polypodiaceae, Polypodiidae)

Thylacopteris is the sister to a diverse clade of polygrammoid ferns that occurs mainly in Southeast Asia and Malesia. The phylogenetic relationships are inferred from DNA sequences of three chloroplast genome regions (rbcL, rps4, rps4‐trnS IGS) for 62 taxa and a fourth cpDNA sequence (trnL‐trnF IGS) for 35 taxa. The results refute previously proposed close relationships to Polypodium s.s. but support suggested relationships to the Southeast Asiatic genus Goniophlebium. In all phylogenetic reconstructions based on more than one cpDNA region, we recovered Thylacopteris as sister to a clade in which Goniophlebium is in turn sister to several lineages, including the genera Lecanopteris, Lepisorus, Microsorum, and their relatives. Goniophlebium and allies comprise a significant component of vascular fern epiphytes in the rain forests of Southeast Asia and Malesia. The relationships of the genus Thylacopteris as at the base of the clade comprising the genera Goniophlebium, Lecanopteris, Lepisorus, Microsorum, and their relatives indicate that this entire lineage arose in Malesia and subsequently dispersed to continental Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and Africa

Predictors of persistence of anxiety disorders across the lifespan:a systematic review

Despite the substantial disease burden of anxiety disorders, physicians have a poor understanding of factors that predict their typical persistent course. This systematic review of predictors of persistent anxiety disorders covered 48 studies with 29 690 patients diagnosed with an anxiety disorder that were published in PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science between Jan 1, 1980 (introduction of DSM-III), and Dec 1, 2019. We also compared predictors between children, adolescents, adults, and older adults (ie, ≥55 years). A persistent course was primarily predicted by clinical and psychological characteristics, including having panic attacks, co-occurring personality disorders, treatment seeking, poor clinical status after treatment, higher severity and longer duration of avoidance behaviour, low extraversion, higher anxiety sensitivity, and higher behavioural inhibition. Unlike disorder onset, sociodemographic characteristics did not predict persistence. Our results outline a profile of patients with specific clinical and psychological characteristics who are particularly vulnerable to anxiety disorder persistence. Clinically, these patients probably deserve additional or more intensive treatment to prevent development of chronicity

Effect of religion on the course of anxiety disorders and symptoms over 9-years follow-up

Background: Religion can be an important aspect in life for people and may therefore be important to consider in anxiety disorders. However, there has been limited research into the longitudinal relationship between religiousness and the prevalence of anxiety disorders or anxiety severity and no such research up to date looking at specific anxiety disorders. Methods: We made use of data from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA), a large clinical cohort study, including 2981 participants at baseline. Based on religious affiliation, commitment to affiliation and religious attendance at baseline as demographic variables, three groups (non-affiliated; affiliated, low commitment/attendance; affiliated, higher commitment/attendance) were compared regarding the prevalence of specific anxiety disorders and anxiety severity at baseline and at two, four, six, and nine years follow-up. For the analyses, we used graphs and Linear Mixed Models. Results: Overall, no differences were found for the prevalence of specific anxiety disorders and of comorbidity between anxiety disorders or comorbidity with depressive disorders. Furthermore, results showed no differences between the groups regarding the anxiety severity over time. Limitations: The main limitations relate to the operationalization of religiousness based on demographic variables at baseline. Conclusions: On a population level, being religiously affiliated with more or less commitment/attendance does not seem to protect against specific anxiety disorders or more anxiety symptoms, nor is it a risk factor. Further research should focus on more internal religious aspects, and more specifically on anxiety in specific groups of religious people or people with specific religion related anxiety

Stability of chronotype over a 7-year follow-up period and its association with severity of depressive and anxiety symptoms

Background: Chronotype is an individual's preferred timing of sleep and activity, and is often referred to as a later chronotype (or evening-type) or an earlier chronotype (or morning-type). Having an evening chronotype is associated with more severe depressive and anxiety symptoms. Based on these findings it is has been suggested that chronotype is a stable construct associated with vulnerability to develop depressive or anxiety disorders. To examine this, we test the stability of chronotype over 7 years, and its longitudinal association with the change in severity of depressive and anxiety symptoms. Methods: Data of 1,417 participants with a depressive and/or anxiety disorder diagnosis and healthy controls assessed at the 2 and 9-year follow-up waves of the Netherlands Study of depression and anxiety were used. Chronotype was assessed with the Munich chronotype questionnaire. Severity of depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed with the inventory of depressive symptomatology and Beck anxiety inventory. Results: Chronotype was found to be moderately stable (r = 0.53) and on average advanced (i.e., became earlier) with 10.8 min over 7 years (p <.001). Controlling for possible confounders, a decrease in severity of depressive symptoms was associated with an advance in chronotype (B = 0.008, p =.003). A change in severity of anxiety symptoms was not associated with a change in chronotype. Conclusion: Chronotype was found to be a stable, trait-like construct with only a minor level advance over a period of 7 years. The change in chronotype was associated with a change in severity of depressive, but not anxiety, symptoms

Old lady charm: explaining the persistent appeal of Chicago antitrust

The paper deals with the mysterious persistence of the Chicago approach as the main analytical engine driving antitrust enforcement in American courts. While the approach has been almost completely replaced in contemporary industrial economics by the so-called Post-Chicago view, Chicago arguments still permeate antitrust case law at all judicial levels. Chicago rise to dominance was allegedly due to the superiority of its economic analysis. Why did the Post-Chicago approach, which is supposed to have a clear analytical edge, fail to do the same? The paper offers a series of explanations: though none is completely exhaustive, each may account for a bit of the story. More generally, the current situation of antitrust case law offers valuable methodological insight on themes such as how economists persuade (i.e., how economic arguments come to be accepted and applied by policy- or law-makers) or the impact of the different professional practices in the diffusion of economic ideas

Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law

Gindis, David, Ernst Freund as Precursor of the Rational Study of Corporate Law (October 27, 2017). Journal of Institutional Economics, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2905547, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2905547The rise of large business corporations in the late 19th century compelled many American observers to admit that the nature of the corporation had yet to be understood. Published in this context, Ernst Freund's little-known The Legal Nature of Corporations (1897) was an original attempt to come to terms with a new legal and economic reality. But it can also be described, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, as the earliest example of the rational study of corporate law. The paper shows that Freund had the intuitions of an institutional economist, and engaged in what today would be called comparative institutional analysis. Remarkably, his argument that the corporate form secures property against insider defection and against outsiders anticipated recent work on entity shielding and capital lock-in, and can be read as an early contribution to what today would be called the theory of the firm.Peer reviewe