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/ 26 September 2002
The fight against poverty in the developing world is being hampered by stringent patent laws imposed by rich countries, an independent commission said last week. Protecting patent rights through the Trips agreement pushes up the price of medicines and seeds for poor countries.
World markets had a serious attack of nerves recently. Just as a consensus was building that the global economy had got off mercifully lightly from the terrorist atrocities of September 11, the dollar, Wall Street and the FTSE 100 all took a hammering.