E-DRUG: IHT on the new drug war
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Editorials and Opinion
Monday, February 12, 2001
A Harsh Campaign to Prevent Affordable AIDS Treatment
by Kevin Watkins
OXFORD, England
Welcome to the new drug war. Not the one being fought against cocaine barons in the jungles of Latin America but the one being waged by the American government and the global pharmaceutical industry against the world's poor. .
The question at the heart of the conflict is whether world trade rules should be used to defend at all costs the drug patents and associated exclusive marketing rights of powerful companies, or whether governments should retain the right to put affordable medicine before corporate profit. .
Next month a new front in the war will be opened in a South African court. Some 40 drug companies, including corporate giants such as GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer, are contesting a 1997 law which allows the government to import cheap drugs, thereby bypassing the monopoly granted to patent holders. .
The principal defendant, and architect of the law in question, is Nelson Mandela. His crime: insisting on his country's right to purchase anti-AIDS drugs at the lowest possible price in order to maximize treatment for the country's 4 million sufferers. .
South Africa is not alone. Four years ago Brazil waived patent rights on HIV/AIDS drugs, allowing local companies to produce cheap versions. Prices fell by more than 80 percent. Today almost every Brazilian AIDS patient gets free of charge the same triple therapy cocktail that has improved survival prospects in the United States. The HIV/AIDS death rate has been halved, and the savings to the health budget are estimated at $400 million. .
Good news for public health? Maybe, but Brazil has just been put in the dock at the World Trade Organization, courtesy of the United States. .At stake is a public health law that allows the Brazilian government to insist that patent holders either produce drugs locally at a controlled price or allow a local manufacturer to do the same. To U.S. trade negotiators, this represents a violation of intellectual property rights. In the eyes of Brazilian public health groups, the U.S. actions amount to a gross violation of the right to health. .
So far, recourse to the WTO has been the exception rather than the rule. This is partly because the United States has a far more potent weapon in its arsenal: namely, the threat of trade sanctions under the "Special 301" trade law provision. Sixteen countries - including India, Egypt, the Dominican Republic and Thailand - have been invited to strengthen patent protection. The poor in those countries will face the consequences. In the case of the Dominican Republic, these will include withdrawal of trade preferences for textile exports, an outcome that could cost 200,000 jobs. .
In effect, developing countries are negotiating on pharmaceutical patents with a loaded gun pointed at their heads. .The legal issues vary, but there are three common themes in these Special 301 cases. First, they have all been initiated by the U.S. trade representative after complaints from Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. .Second, they have been directed at countries with strong generic drugs industries, capable of producing low-cost copies of patented drugs. .Third, the aim is to overturn national legislation allowing governments to give priority to affordable medicine for the poor over the patent rights of drugs companies. .All of which raises some disturbing questions about world trade rules and public health. .
Ultimately, patents are a contract between inventors and the rest of society. Inventors are rewarded for the commercial risk they take with a temporary monopoly, lasting 20 years under WTO rules, during which they have the right to sell their inventions at whatever price they choose. Governments have to balance potential conflicts between the public good and private monopoly. .
The wrong balance is being struck. This year 11 million people in developing countries will die from preventable infectious diseases, many of them because they are unable to afford basic medicines. More stringent patent protection threatens to make such medicines even less affordable. .
The facts speak for themselves. Companies in Brazil and Thailand are able to market a version of the drug fluconazole, used in the treatment of meningitis, at annual treatment prices of $100, compared to $3,000 for the patented product price. In India, companies market ciprofloxacin, an anti-infective drug used in the treatment of bloody diarrhea, at one eighth of the price charged in Pakistan, where only the patented version is available. .
In theory, the WTO agreement allows for public health safeguards, but these are being progressively eroded through the combined efforts of Washington and the pharmaceutical industry. It is bad enough that the world's most powerful industrial lobby has adopted such harsh standards. Far worse is the willingness of the U.S. government to back such demands with gunboat trade diplomacy recalling 19th century Britain. .
Pharmaceutical companies maintain that the way to deal with the public health threat posed by patents is through philanthropic price discounts, negotiated on a product-by product and country-by-country basis. But while philanthropy has a positive role to play, this is too limited a response. .
What is needed is a fundamental reform of the WTO intellectual property rules, starting with a reduction in the period of patent protection, reinforced health safeguards and a comprehensive ban on the threatened use of trade sanctions. .
The writer, senior policy adviser at Oxfam, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.
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