E-DRUG: NYT Editorial-Brazil's Right to Save Lives
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The New York Times
June 23, 2005
Brazil's Right to Save Lives
[Copied as fair use]
Brazil has the best anti-AIDS program of any developing country. It has a
model prevention effort and was the first poor country to provide free AIDS
treatment to all who need it, a program countries around the world are now
beginning to emulate.
It has been able to afford this because Brazilian labs make copycat
versions of expensive brand-name drugs. Brazil can freely copy any drug
commercialized before 1997, when the country began to respect patents on
medicines, a requirement for joining the World Trade Organization. But
newer AIDS medicines are still imported and are expensive, and Brazil is
spending two-thirds of its antiretroviral budget on just three of these
drugs.
The government is now contemplating measures that would allow Brazilian
labs to copy these drugs. Brazil's health ministry has asked the
manufacturers of the drugs to voluntarily license Brazil to make copies.
They have refused, and Brazil is threatening to break the patents and pay
the holders a reasonable royalty, as W.T.O. rules require.
Right-wing groups in the United States and pharmaceutical manufacturers are
calling this theft, and several members of Congress have asked the United
States trade representative to apply trade sanctions. American trade
officials have refrained, but they have criticized Brazil's threat to seize
patents. While property rights deserve respect and should not be carelessly
violated, what Brazil is doing is legal and deserves Washington's support.
Brazil's opponents argue that the country has no real AIDS emergency. Drug
companies note that they offer Brazil drugs at deep discounts and say that
Brazil can afford them. But the World Trade Organization rules are clear:
they encourage all members to use the flexibilities in the intellectual
property rules to promote access to medicine for all. Countries need not
wait for an emergency, and Brazil isn't even a tough call.
Brazil's free universal treatment program, an indispensable weapon against
the AIDS epidemic, locks Brazil's government into buying lifelong daily
medicines for 170,000 people, and that number is rising. Brazil has the
right to make sure it can continue to meet this burden by getting medicines
at the cheapest possible price.
Breaking patents should be reserved for when it is clearly necessary to
protect public health. But these rights have been underused. Only a handful
of countries have used W.T.O. rules to break patents on medicines.
Countries are intimidated, mainly by the United States. Health ministers
who propose making copycat drugs are usually silenced by influential local
business sectors afraid of trade retaliation. The American trade
representative should make a public statement that the United States will
not retaliate against Brazil for exercising its right to save lives.
---
Rachel M. Cohen
U.S. Director, Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
333 Seventh Avenue, 2nd Floor * New York, NY * 10001-5004 * USA
Tel: +1-212-655-3762
Mobile: +1-917-331-9077
Fax: +1-212-679-7016
E-mail: rachel.cohen@newyork.msf.org
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
http://www.accessmed-msf.org/