The Blogosphere is abuzz with the BBC report that Taiwan has decided to break the patent on Tamiful and produce the drug itself.
Taiwan has responded to bird flu fears by starting work on its own version of the anti-viral drug, Tamiflu, without waiting for the manufacturer's consent.
Taiwan officials said they had applied for the right to copy the drug - but the priority was to protect the public.
Tamiflu, made by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, cannot cure bird-flu but is widely seen as the best anti-viral drug to fight it, correspondents say
Taiwan was surprisingly sucessful in fighting SARS. Don't get pessimistic about the island's ability to contain bird flu just yet....
[Taiwan]
5 comments:
Successful in fighting SARS?
Da-Bien sat with his thumbs up his ass and pointed his fingers at Hong Kong and China while doing NOTHING at home. Then the infections hit!
I was there. I rememebred it. Locals running out to 7-11 during quarantine, the infection spreading. Doctors refusing to treat patients.
Now, if you said, "Taiwan stopped SARS from confligrating," then you'd be correct, but for a two week time period the island did NOTHING, despite the fact that Hong Kong and Chian are regular, weekly business trips for many a local, thus a circle of possible infection was there.
When Taiwan did step up the protection there were 32 infections and NO precautions were taken. Also, they started quarentining travelers from Canada BEFORE those coming from serious hot zones in China and Hong Kong.
Why do you hate Taiwan, Turton, and feel the need to bend the truth?
Oh, that's right: DPP were in charge.
I hate to side with the anonymous rant above, but I was less than impressed with the SARS handling.
Certainly Taiwan handled things better than China - but some of the hospital mismanagement was a mess, and overall coordination should have been better. It could have been worse - but it could have been a whole lot better.
Anonymous above said: "Why do you hate Taiwan, Turton, and feel the need to bend the truth?"
If Michael hated Taiwan, why would he "bend the truth" to defend it? That makes no sense at all.
Could the response have been better?Of course. But it was what it was, and the SARS outbreak wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been.
By the way, has anyone ever told you you'd make a damn good pirate?
Da-Bien sat with his thumbs up his ass and pointed his fingers at Hong Kong and China while doing NOTHING at home. Then the infections hit!
Actually, I wrote during the SARS problem that taiwan would be unable to contain the infection, pointing to the exact evidence you did. You can find the piece on the web over at East Cathay....
Sure, the gov't screwed up. Police didn't enforce the quarantine. People simply skipped out, and serious punishments were not meted out. But in the end, we did contain it.
BTW, a more robust analysis than yours might show that one reason Chen could shut things down is that when he tried to his opponents from other parties accused him of being a facist. Of course, he was also handicapped by attitudes toward the law and toward the needs of others ingrained by 50 years of Authoritarian rule, not to mention inadequate laws and resources, also a legacy of the KMT. I hope someday you'll find your way to a more robust and historically-informed position on Taiwan Affairs than "Chen Sucks!" That refrain is both wearisome and boring.
Also, real adults don't call people by names like Da-bian. They give people their real names, even when they don't like them.
Michael
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