Arianna Huffington, "Pharmacologic Al

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/files/062899.html

June 28, 1998,
Arianna Huffington, "Pharmacologic Al"

Presidential race 2000 has already spawned its first protests,
with demonstrators following Vice President Al Gore from
Tennessee to New Hampshire to New York to Philadelphia. There is
no catchy character -- like 1992's ``Chicken George'' or 1996's
``Buttman'' - but their issue provides an excellent object lesson
about the rotten core of American politics: how our campaign
finance system allows powerful special interests to secretly
dictate policy -- even when the life or death of millions is at
stake.
				
The protesters are outraged that Gore, in his role as co-chair of
the U.S.-South African Binational Commission, has, according to a
recent State Department report to Congress, spearheaded ``an
assiduous, concerted campaign'' to stop South Africa from making
low-cost AIDS drugs available to its 3.2 million infected
citizens.

Allowing South Africa to license domestic production of the
lifesaving drugs, known as ``compulsory licensing,'' is one of
those rare issues -- such as child abuse and drunk driving -- on
which there cannot possibly be two sides. After all, the country
is suffering from an AIDS epidemic that our own surgeon general
has compared ``to the plague that decimated the population of
Europe in the 14th century.''

Although sub-Saharan African nations account for 70 percent of
the world's new HIV cases and 90 percent of all AIDS deaths, less
than 1 percent of AIDS drugs are sold there. Who would defend
leaving hundreds of thousands to die because lifesaving medicines
are priced out of their reach? Certainly not the same people who
have spared no expense in the last few months waging a
humanitarian war.

Or so one would think. But Gore, wedded to a trade policy that is
anything but humanitarian, thinks otherwise and has aligned
himself with the pharmaceutical companies that are suing the
government of South Africa. They claim that its 1997 Medicines
Act violates World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations by
allowing for the compulsory licensing and parallel importing --
i.e., shopping for the best price -- of AIDS drugs. But it does
not. In fact, WTO rules are particularly liberal when it comes to
national emergencies such as epidemics.

In explanation, the vice president's office served up a
bureaucratic cocktail of words -- to be taken only with an empty
head. ``In August 1998,'' his spokesman told me, ``the vice
president met with Thabo Mbeki (now South Africa's president) and
proposed trying to clarify Section 15(c) of South Africa's
Medicines Act by working toward a resolution within a framework
that included parallel importing and compulsory licensing in line
with international agreements.'' I don't know how many South
Africans died of AIDS while you were reading that sentence, but
many have perished while the vice president has been figuring out
the controlling legal authority over AIDS drugs. It looks like
Gore's ``livability agenda'' stops at the suburbs' edge.

The reasons why Gore tried to get Mbeki to acquiesce to the drug
companies are chillingly laid out in next month's American
Prospect magazine. John B. Judis exposes ``K Street Gore's
interlocking directorate'' of aides, friends, advisors and
lobbyists moving seamlessly between the pharmaceutical
industry and his inner circle. Among them are Anthony Podesta, a
top advisor and close friend of Gore and one of the
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America's chief
lobbyists; Gore's chief domestic policy advisor David Beier, who
was previously the top in-house lobbyist for Genentech; and
Peter Knight, Gore's main fund-raiser, who made $120,000 lobbying
for Schering-Plough. (According to Public Campaign, Gore has
helped raise at least $1.4 million from drug companies over the
course of his career.) With all of this crossover, a drug to
loosen Al up on the campaign trail can't be far off.

It is no wonder that the African Growth and Opportunity Act,
sponsored by Rep. Phil Crane (R-Ill.) with the full backing of
the president and the vice president, does not even mention the
AIDS crisis. Fortunately, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has
introduced a competing bill that would prevent the United States
from applying sanctions on South Africa and other sub-Saharan
nations that are attempting to make AIDS drugs widely available.
``American drug companies want some of the poorest people in the
world to pay U.S. market prices for drugs,'' Jackson told me.
``But AIDS drugs can cost $500 per week -- which happens to be
the annual per capita income of sub-Saharan Africa.''

One indication that the Jackson bill is gaining steam is the fact
that Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), who originally co-sponsored both
bills, has now decided to support Jackson's. ``It is the better
bill,'' he told me. ``The White House called me and asked me to
support Crane's, but it puts trade above all other humanitarian
concerns.''
The vice president's office says it is trying ``to help AIDS
patients by making sure drug companies maintain profit levels to
develop new AIDS medications.'' But what good are AIDS
medications if they can't get to the people with AIDS?

And someone should remind the vice president that last year alone
the three major AIDS-drug manufacturers -- Glaxo Wellcome,
Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer -- made respectively $4.43
billion, $3.64 billion and $3.35 billion.

Up to now money has talked louder than the muffled cries of
millions of African AIDS victims. But the chants of the
protesters on the campaign trail are amplifying their cries. Will
they also lead to a change in policy from pharmacologic Al?