BMS Press briefing on HIV/Africa initiative

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

I attended the BMS press conference today on their new AIDS in 
Africa initiative.  Apparently BMS is going to donate $100 
million over 5 years to some programs involving AIDS.  This 
$20 million per year (on average) investment will be spread 
around to Harvard,  Morehouse and Baylor, UNAIDS, community
treatment projects in South Africa, Botswana,
Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland, plus some others.  The
press conference was very high tech and heavily staffed
by BMS....It looked like they were spending $100 million
just on the announcement. 

Charles A. Heimbold, Jr, the BMS Chairman and CEO was there, 
and this was clearly designed to make him look good.  He
tried to smile through the whole event, but had a few problems
during the question and answer period.  Russell Mokhiber,
representing "Corporate Crime Reporter" was the first person to
ask questions, and Russell asked a number of specific questions
regarding BMS's efforts to stop compulsory licensing.  Heimbold
said that compulsory licensing would stop R&D on HIV drugs.  
Heimbold refused to answer questions during the press conference
on his companies role in litigation against introduction of 
generic copies of drugs that BMS was selling in Thailand or 
Africa.  After the press conference Heimbold told me that
BMS was one of the countries suing the South African government
over the South African Medicines Act.  

Heimbold had trouble answering questions about the government's
role in the development of drugs that BMS sells.  For example,
he thought that ddI was "that drug we got from Yale," while
in fact, d4T was from Yale, and the patent on ddI is held by
the US government.  He said that BMS spent "tens of millions
of dollars" on the development of ddI.  After the press
conference was over BMS PR officials quickly tried to say this
was "hundreds of millions" which is pretty absurd, given the
fact that that total private sector expenditures on clinical 
trials on all US orphan drugs were only $213 million from 1983 
to 1993. But of course, this was a public relations event, and 
BMS was not anxious to address this issue.

Eric Sawyer, representing Poz, asked a few questions about 
the BMS policy regarding price HIV drug price cuts for Africa
and other developing countries, but did not receive answers.
At the end, Mr. Heimbold invited a few of us to meet with
him and open our own wallets and join BMS in making charitable 
contributions to address AIDS in Africa.  

   Jamie Love


This was the statement I handed out.
<---------------------------------------------->

Statement of James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org


202.387.8030
love@cptech.org


May 6, 1999


The Bristol-Myers Squibb announcement is a cynical public
relations ploy by a company that is fighting to maintain its
monopolies on government funded HIV drugs.  The $100 million gift
is about $3 or $4 for each infected HIV patient in Africa, and it
is less than the $146 million that BMS paid its CEO last year.


This press conference comes less than two weeks from the
beginning on the World Health Assembly meetings in Geneva where
nations will be debating proposals for compulsory licensing of
essential medicines in poor countries.


President Clinton, Vice President Gore and US government
officials are pressuring South Africa, Thailand and many other
countries, to prevent the use of compulsory licensing to expand
access to US government funded HIV inventions like ddI, d4T -
drugs currently sold at high prices on an exclusive basis by BMS.


-- 
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