Roger Bate

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Roger Bate is a British educated economist who has held a variety of positions in free market oriented organizations. His work focuses on solving the problem of counterfeit and substandard medicines, particularly those in the developing world. He also works on US and international aid policy, performance of aid organisations, and health policy in developing countries, particularly with regard to malaria control and the use of DDT. [1] He consulted for the tobacco industry in the mid-'90s, though the extent of this work is disputed. [2] [3] He is currently a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, and he was on the board of directors of Africa Fighting Malaria.

Contents

Early life and education

Bate was a tennis coach from 1984 to 1986 and between 1986 and 1989 worked as a research analyst for Warburg Securities and Charles Stanley Stockbrokers. [4] Bate attended Thames Valley University and 1n 1992 graduated with a BA in economics, then University College, London graduating with a MSc in Environmental Resource management in 1993. [4] He studied economics at the University of Cambridge and in 1994 obtained an MPhil in land economy. [4]

Career

In 1993, Bate worked for the Institute of Economic Affairs, a British free market think tank, and founded the Environmental Unit. In 1994, he started the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF). [1]

The Ecologist magazine described Bate as having “midwived British climate denial”. [5] [6]

In 1996, Bate approached R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for a grant of £50,000 to fund a book on risk, containing a chapter on passive smoking, (i.e. "second hand smoke") but the grant request was denied.[ citation needed ] According to internal industry documents the Tobacco Institute was nonetheless "involved in" the publication of the book. [7] That same year he wrote the article "Is Nothing Worse Than Tobacco?" for The Wall Street Journal , and later ESEF published What Risk? Science, Politics and Public Health, edited by Bate, which included a chapter on passive smoking. After the publication of this chapter, according to Bate, he undertook a brief period consulting for the Philip Morris corporation, working for £800 per day. He then approached Philip Morris seeking funding for a project on DDT and malaria, as well as on the Montreal Protocol against climate change and its possible implications for the development of a similar protocol for the tobacco industry. He noted that for [2] [8] [ non-primary source needed ]

Genetic engineering

Bate is joint author, with Julian Morris of Fearing Food: Risk, Health and Environment, published by Butterworth-Heinemann in September 1999.[ citation needed ] The IEA website describes the book in the following way: "In the latest ESEF book, Fearing Food, new agricultural and food technologies, including genetic engineering, are shown to be generally beneficial both to health and to the environment."[ citation needed ] Bate was also a presenter on the BBC2 programme Organic Food: The Modern Myth.[ citation needed ]

Counterfeit drugs

Bate's work focuses on the prevalence of counterfeit anti-malarials and other pharmaceuticals in Africa [9] [10] and strategies by which rich and poor nations can work together to stop the trade of counterfeits. His original research has been published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, [11] the Journal of Health Economics, [12] and PLoS Medicine. [13] AEI Press will publish his book Phake: The Deadly World of Falsified and Substandard Medicines in May 2011. The book explores the underground trade in illegal medicines, provides a firsthand account of the illegal industry, and offers academic and policy analysis. Prior to Phake, AEI Press published his book Making a Killing: The Deadly Implications of the Counterfeit Drug Trade in May 2008. In Making a Killing, Bate calls for stronger policing resources, harsher penalties for counterfeiters, widespread public education and consumer vigilance to deal with the proliferation of counterfeit drugs.

Bate distinguishes between approved generic drugs and what he calls "pseudo-generics." These are drugs approved as generic versions of proprietary drugs by bodies such as the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but which, according to Bate, have not been adequately tested for efficacy. [14]

Funding

Bate's work has been funded by the Legatum Institute, which is affiliated with Legatum Capital. [1] [15] He has also received funding from Novartis. [16]

Positions held

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Sarvana, Adam (28 May 2009). "Bate and Switch: How a free-market magician manipulated two decades of environmental science". Natural Resources New Service. Retrieved 2 June 2009.
  2. 1 2 Bate, R; Political Economy Research Center (4 September 1998). "Letter to Greenberg, DI; Phillip Morris". Legacy Tobacco Documents Library. University of California. Bates 2065246736/6737.
  3. ↑ Bate, Roger (May 2008). "DDT Works". The Prospect Online.
  4. 1 2 3 Roger Bate CV, 4pp, 2/2009, American Enterprise Institute Scholars, retrieved 11 July 2018
  5. ↑ "The secret love affair between Roger Bate and Big Tobacco". The Ecologist. 19 September 2018. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  6. ↑ "Right-wing think tank accused of promoting tobacco and oil industry "propaganda" in schools". openDemocracy. 28 November 2018. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  7. ↑ Email from Adam Bryan Brown 15 September 1998, 1p, Truth Tobacco Industry library UCSF
  8. ↑ Bate, Roger (28 September 1998). "Letter to Matthew Winokur".
  9. ↑ Bate R, Coticelli P, Tren R, Attaran A (2008). Awadalla P (ed.). "Antimalarial Drug Quality in the Most Severely Malarious Parts of Africa – A Six Country Study". PLOS ONE. 3 (5): e2132. Bibcode:2008PLoSO...3.2132B. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002132 . PMC   2324203 . PMID   18461128. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  10. ↑ "Resisting arrest". The Economist. 15 May 2008.
  11. ↑ Bate, Roger; Ginger Zhe Jin; Aparna Mathur (2013). "In Whom We Trust: the Role of Certification Agencies in Online Drug Markets" (PDF). The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy. 14 (1): 111–150. doi:10.1515/bejeap-2013-0085. S2CID   152966119.
  12. ↑ Bate, Roger; Ginger Zhe Jin; Aparna Mathur (July 2011). "Does price reveal poor-quality drugs? Evidence from 17 countries" (PDF). Journal of Health Economics. 30 (6): 1150–1163. doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2011.08.006. PMID   21917346. S2CID   14230303.
  13. ↑ Paul N. Newton, Abdinasir A. Amin, Chris Bird, Phillip Passmore, Graham Dukes, Go¨ran Tomson, Bright Simons, Roger Bate, Philippe J. Guerin, Nicholas J. White (2011). "The Primacy of Public Health Considerations in Defining Poor Quality Medicines". PLOS Medicine. 8 (12): e1001139. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001139 . PMC   3232210 . PMID   22162953.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  14. ↑ "AEI – Bad Medicine in the Market". Archived from the original on 29 June 2009.
  15. ↑ "AEI – Scholars – Roger Bate". American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  16. ↑ Bate R, Tren R, Hess K, Attaran A (2009). "Physical and chemical stability of expired fixed dose combination artemether-lumefantrine in uncontrolled tropical conditions". Malar. J. 8 (1): 33. doi: 10.1186/1475-2875-8-33 . PMC   2649943 . PMID   19243589.
  17. ↑ "Mission".

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