Mbeki vs. the AIDS Establishment... (3)
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Invitation to take part in a POLL: should patents on AIDS drugs fall
into public domain?
on the Web:
http://www.egroups.com/surveys/prevges
(requires to 'Sign In' with egroups)
or by email:
mailto:prevges-owner@egroups.com?Subject=Yes_lift_patents_on_AIDS_drugs
mailto:prevges-owner@egroups.com?Subject=No_keep_patents_on_AIDS_drugs
The contributions re. the discussion on AIDS on AFRO-NETS increasingly
reveal the frictions regarding access to AIDS drugs that are currently
covered by pharmaceutical company patents.
Given the extent of the AIDS tragedy at the individual, family, friend-
ship, community, regional, continental and world-wide levels, shouldn't
the World innovate to find an answer to the problems raised by patents?
Under the Article 25(a) of the 1948 declaration of the Human Rights,
"everyone has the right to ... medical care ...". In many cases the UN
has declared economic sanctions against countries who deny basic Human
Rights to individuals. Today it isn't a country as such but pharmaceu-
tical corporations who are denying access to drugs to Humans suffering
from AIDS. The rights of those corporations to profit from revenues
generated by the expensive AIDS drugs are protected by patents (some-
thing compatible with Article 27(b) of the Human Rights declaration).
Since the misbalance of access to AIDS drugs is now representing a
world-wide threat to stability(*), shouldn't the World innovate and
take the bold step of declaring that all current, pending and future
patents on drugs necessary for AIDS patients must fall into public do-
main in all parts of the World without delay, limitation nor compensa-
tion of any kind, and -- since incentives seem to be required -- that
any country not complying with this resolution should be economically
sanctioned?
Christian Labadie, MS
Co-Moderator of PrevGES - http://nucwww.chem.sunysb.edu/PrevGES/
mailto:CLabadie@t-online.de
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(*) US announced in May 2000 a US$ 254m military budget to combat AIDS
overseas, as the AIDS demographic catastrophe will become a factor for
"revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, genocides and disruptive regime tran-
sitions" that in turn are felt by the US national security council as a
possible threat to the US security.
[Barton Gellman (2000) US identifies AIDS as global threat to peace.
The Guardian Weekly Vol. 162, No. 19, p. 1
e-mail: <gwsubs@guardian.co.uk> ]
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