Pharmaceutical industry officials on Thursday said that talks over access to generic drugs, including antiretrovirals, are "deadlocked," despite optimism from officials at the World Trade Organisation, Reuters reports. U.S. negotiators in February refused to sign a deal under the Doha declaration to allow developing nations to override patent protections to produce generic versions of drugs to combat public health epidemics such as AIDS unless wording was included to specify which diseases constitute a public health epidemic.