E-drug: NYTimes: The Urgency of Cheaper Drugs
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[Interesting that New York Times is writing this kind of Editorial!
Copied as fair use. HH]
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/31/opinion/31WED3.html?ex=1
005527735&ei=1&en=fda897489a216176
The Urgency of Cheaper Drugs
31 October 2001
When the federal government wanted to stockpile the antibiotic
Cipro as a treatment for anthrax, Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy Thompson persuaded Bayer, the patent holder, to
cut the price of the drug by threatening to buy generic versions. Yet
the Bush administration is derailing efforts by poor countries
ravaged by AIDS to facilitate their efforts to do the same.
Members of the World Trade Organization are meeting in Doha,
Qatar, on Nov. 9 to try to launch a new round of high-level talks on
trade. The majority of the world's nations, led by Brazil, want to
pass a declaration stating that nothing in the World Trade
Organization rules governing patents would prevent governments
from safeguarding public health.
The nations pushing for change want to broaden the World Trade
Organization's rules on intellectual property to make it easier for
countries to manufacture or import low-cost drugs, especially the
anti-AIDS cocktail that costs more than $10,000 per year in the
developed world. While current world trade rules allow countries to
break patents under certain circumstances, among them public
health emergencies, no country has done it for AIDS medicines, in
part because of pressure from Washington. A World Trade
Organization resolution clearly stating that public health comes first
would give these nations political support.
The United States and Switzerland, home to many multinational
drug companies, are blocking the declaration and proposing a
weaker version, unacceptable to most other countries. Their draft
proposal puts less weight on public health needs and does not fix
some important barriers to cheaper drugs, especially one that will
prohibit countries that can make generics from exporting them to
nations that lack the capacity. The American government, echoing
drug makers, argues that patents are not a significant bar to AIDS
treatment.
It is true that other problems, including lack of trained people to
deliver the medicines, impede AIDS treatment. But for millions of
AIDS sufferers, patents that keep drug prices high are a major
reason that AIDS treatment is out of reach. Anthrax has killed a
handful of Americans so far. AIDS has killed 22 million worldwide.
Americans today can surely understand the need to give poor
countries every possible weapon to fight back.
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