Vice President Gore's role in stopping South Africa government from authorizing compulsory licensing of HIV/AIDS drugs

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

For  Immediate Release
Re:  Vice President Gore's role in stopping South Africa
     government from authorizing compulsory licensing of HIV/AIDS
     drugs

FMI: Jamie Love, love@cptech.org 202.387.8030
     http://www.cptech.org
     Ralph Nader 202.387.8030
          

Today Ralph Nader and James Love of the Consumer Project on
Technology (CPT) asked Vice President Gore to reverse US
government policy on South African policies regarding access to
drugs for HIV/AIDS and other essential medicines.  According to
Nader and Love, Vice President Gore has "engaged in an
astonishing array of bullying tactics to prevent South Africa
from implementing policies, legal under the rules of the World
Trade Organization, that are designed to expand access to
HIV/AIDS drugs."   

In dispute are South African attempts to implement legislation to
permit parallel imports of pharmaceutical drugs, which enable
South Africa to buy drugs on the global market at the best world
price, and compulsory licensing of medical patents.  

Nader and Love cited a 10 page February 5, 1999 Department of
State report which detailed the role of the Vice President and US
trade agencies in seeking the repeal of provisions in the South
African Medicines Act which permit parallel importing and
compulsory licensing.

"The United States Surgeon General has likened the HIV/AIDS
epidemic in Africa to the plague which decimated Europe in the
14th century, Public health officials estimate that one in five
pregnant women in South Africa are HIV positive, and that more
than 45 percent of the South African military personnel are
infected."

According to Nader and Love, US government trade officials have
trumped up spurious  charges against the South African program,
and made untrue assertions that South African polices violate
World Trade Organization rules.  However, trade experts including
those that work for the WTO itself have been very clear that
parallel importing and compulsory licensing of essential
medicines are specifically permitted under the WTO "TRIPS"
agreement on intellectual property.
          
"This [Department of State] report provides chapter and verse of
a two year campaign to use the weight of US power, short of
military warfare, on South Africa to prevent that country from
implementing policies to obtain cheaper sources of essential
medicines"

"[T]he United States government ... is literally asking South
Africa to abandon the lives of millions of infected citizens in
order to receive reductions in US barriers to trade or economic
aid."  

A copy of the Nader/Love Letter and the February 5, 1999
Department of State Report on are the web at:

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa                     



-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org