E-drug: NYTimes: U.S. Backs New Trade Rules on Drugs
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NY Times June 25, 2002
U.S. Backs New Trade Rules on Drugs
By ELIZABETH OLSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/25/business/worldbusiness/25TRAD.html?tntemai
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GENEVA, June 24 � The United States said today that it would back a revision
of global trading rules that would allow poor countries to import patented
drugs quickly and cheaply to deal with health crises like AIDS.
"We're putting forward a framework for solving this problem," one American
trade official said, explaining the American position as the 144 members of
the World Trade Organization began three days of meetings on the topic.
Disputes over access to medicines nearly sank the start of a new round of
global trade talks at Doha, Qatar, last November.
The European Union also put forward a proposal as delegates took up the
question of revising the 1994 accord on trade-related intellectual property
covering patents and copyrights.
The accord's grace period for developing countries to be in compliance and
begin enforcing foreign patents ends on Jan. 1, 2005, and many poor
countries are grappling with how to meet their trade-treaty obligations and
still get affordable medicines to combat epidemics. Few have a domestic
industry that could make many modern drugs, even under license.
At Doha, the organization endorsed the right of countries that are facing
public health emergencies to set aside drug patents and authorize
manufacturers inside or outside their borders to make generic versions of
the drugs they need. The talks that begin here on Tuesday are meant to set
the specific rules for doing so.
Major pharmaceutical companies fear that the process will open the door to
an uncontrolled flow of unlicensed medicines that will undermine their
markets.
Activists complained that both the American and the European proposals will
mandate border controls, unnecessarily burden poor countries and leave them
open to legal challenges from drug companies. "The proposal is needlessly
complicated and won't be very workable," said Ellen 't Hoen, of Doctors
Without Borders. She and others accused the industrialized countries of
reneging on their commitments at Doha.
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