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Guardian article on US/South Africa Dispute
For those who did not see this, here is last week's article
in the Guardian regarding the US/South Africa dispute.
The article mentions the recent vote on the Sanders Amendment,
saying
"Two weeks ago, the US congress voted overwhelmingly to allow
the state department to continue waging its economic war
against South Africa's Aids prevention programme."
This is one benefit of getting vote, even when you lose, or even
lose big. You can shock the world's conscience. jl
George Monbiot
Hanging on to
the profits from
Aids
Sufferers in Africa are
threatened by sanctions
against cheap drugs
The Guardian
Thursday August 5, 1999
South Africa is now the epicentre of
the global Aids quake. Twenty-two
per cent of its pregnant women are
HIV-positive. Within 10 years, the
country's average life expectancy
will drop from 59 to 40. The
international community has been
quick to respond to this
catastrophe: the United States has
threatened South Africa with
sanctions for trying to prevent its
citizens from catching the disease.
Aids is, of course, incurable,
though plenty can be done to delay
its onset and treat its symptoms.
But a number of drugs have been
shown both to prevent transmission
of the HIV virus from mother to
baby and to reduce the chances of
infection for women who take them
after being raped. Unfortunately,
they are formidably expensive, due
in part to the prodigious profits
extracted by the companies which
own the patents.
In South Africa there is,
understandably, public pressure for
the widespread deployment of
these drugs, not least because the
country has the highest incidence
of rape in the world. The
government is trying to respond. To
buy drugs for all South Africa's
vulnerable people from the
companies which own the patents
is simply impossible: the country's
public finances are already
overstretched. Instead, the
government has passed a law
enabling it to find cheaper means
of saving tens of thousands of lives.
There is nothing radical or
innovative about the legislation.
Indeed, the same measures are
used routinely by both the UK and
US governments. The new law
simply allows the department of
health either to purchase,
compulsorily, the rights to
manufacture the drugs it needs, or
to buy them from the country which
produces them, under licence,
most cheaply. But the measure
offends 40 of the most powerful
companies on earth.
The colossal profits enjoyed by the
pharmaceutical firms which own the
patents for Aids drugs depend
upon their total control of
production and distribution. These
companies might not have
developed the drugs entirely by
themselves (some emerged from
publicly funded work or were
acquired through the purchase of
smaller firms) but they guard their
patents jealously.
While the South African law would
allow them to continue to make
money from the drugs they
manufacture by wresting exclusive
control from them, it would cut their
profits back to levels which anyone
else would consider reasonable.
But nothing, even the lives of
millions, can be permitted to
threaten the value of their shares.
The companies launched a legal
challenge and recruited their
friends in the US government to
ensure that profit takes precedence
over human life. Two weeks ago,
the US congress voted
overwhelmingly to allow the state
department to continue waging its
economic war against South
Africa's Aids prevention
programme.
Bill Clinton's administration needs
little encouragement. For the past
two years, the state department
boasts, "all relevant agencies of the
US government ... have been
engaged in an assiduous,
concerted campaign to persuade
the government of South Africa to
withdraw". To their disgust, US
officials discovered that the crudely
partisan trade treaties they had
forced South Africa to sign offered
them no help: the country's actions
remain legal. So instead of
pursuing their claim through the
World Trade Organisation, they
started applying unilateral
pressure. Preferential trade
treatment for South Africa has been
withdrawn. Its government has
been told that the US will apply
sanctions if it persists in its attempt
to stop the spread of Aids. The US
vice-president and the French,
Swiss and German heads of
government have helped to
hammer the message home.
The United States is determined
never to let anything like this
happen again. Last month,
congress, with President Clinton's
blessing, passed the "African
growth and opportunity act". From
now on, African countries will
receive American aid, trade
concessions and debt relief only if
they agree to hand over their key
assets to US corporations and
promise to keep cutting public
spending. Education and
healthcare on the continent,
including, of course, Africa's Aids
prevention programmes, will be
progressively snuffed out.
As Senator Richard Lugar, one of
the sponsors of the bill, observed:
"Important as our child survival,
health, agriculture, educational and
humanitarian programmes have
been, they have not ... benefited the
American economy. For that
reason, it is time to re-evaluate our
policy."
Western democracy is suffering
from a dreadful virus. It causes an
auto-immune disease which forces
the body politic's defence system
to turn against its own tissues.
America is just the first country to
be felled by this illness which
respects no borders. Left
unchecked, corporate power will kill
every democratic government on
earth.
--
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