Angelina Jolie's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (May 14, 2013) stating why she had a double mastectomy (or breast removal) has created a media sensation across the world.

Newsclick discusses with Dr. Amit Sengupta the impact of the recent Supreme Court judgement in the Novartis case on the Indian pharmaceutical sector, the Public Health Policy in the country and the R&D policies of foreign pharmaceutical manufacturers.

On 26th December 2004 the then UPA-I Government promulgated an ordinance -- The Patents (Amendment) Ordinance, 2004.

Kalyani Menon Sen, activist and feminist researcher discusses with Newsclick the importance of access to drugs, specially in certain life-threatening diseases. Today, a lot of women are getting affected with breast cancer. According to the national cancer registry, over 1,00,000 women in India develop breast cancer every year. Herceptin is a drug which is useful in the most aggressive form of the cancer, which typically afflicts younger patients. But its cost is prohibitive for almost any Indian patient to afford. Given the drug’s important public health benefit, Kalyani Menon Sen feels that Indian government should issue compulsory license and make the drug accessible to a large number of women.

Strangely enough, the more lawyers a government has, the more poor are the draft laws it produces.

Capital is as terrified of the absence of profit or a very small profit as nature is of a vacuum. With suitable profits, capital is awakened; with 10 percent, it can be used anywhere; with 20 percent, it becomes lively; with 50 percent, positively daring; with 100 percent, it will crush all human laws under its feet; and with 300 percent, there is no crime it is not willing to dare, even at the risk of the gallows."

Do patents  help or hinder innovation? Instinctively, they would seem a blessing, especially for backroom tinkerers. Patenting an idea gives its inventor a 20-year monopoly to exploit