NYT August 23, 1999 editorial on: Drugs for AIDS in Africa

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

I believe many have already seen this, but for those who have
not, this is the August 23, 1999 editorial in the New York Times
regarding AIDS drugs for Africa.  (The editorial mentions the
Thailand case also).  The editorial is a strong endorsement of
the campaign for changes in US policy regarding trade pressures
and it also endorses the call for giving the WHO licenses to use
government funded inventions of essential drugs.   Jamie


New York Times Editorial

August 23, 1999
								
Drugs for AIDS in Africa

The average African nation spends less than $10 per person each
year on health care. The mix of drugs, including the new protease
inhibitors, necessary to turn AIDS from a death sentence into a
chronic disease costs at least $12,000 per person each year. That
disparity virtually guarantees that most of the 22 million
Africans infected with the AIDS virus will not get the best
available treatment. Few will even be able to afford less
expensive life-prolonging drugs such as AZT or ddI or -- far
cheaper and just as crucial -- medicines to fight the infections
that accompany AIDS.

Washington is now arguing with South Africa about a new law in
that country that could allow South Africa to make cheap versions
of still-patented drugs or import them at less than the
manufacturers want to charge.
 
The debate is important, and it has revealed the need to broaden
the Administration's policy, which has been dominated by trade
issues and the desire to protect American pharmaceutical patents.

Washington should stop pressuring South Africa to change the law,
but even then far more will need to be done to get lifesaving
medicines to poor Africans with AIDS.

Part of the challenge is to increase the avail- ability of
already affordable drugs. Last month, the Administration
announced a $100 million effort to fight AIDS in Africa. It will
buy and help countries use some cheap treatments, like medicines
for tuberculosis and other AIDS-related infections and drugs to
prevent mother-child transmission.

While some pharmaceutical manufacturers, most recently
Bristol-Myers Squibb, are making substantial donations to fight
AIDS in poor countries, they want to see governments or health
organizations bear the cost of AIDS drugs.

But most of the newer ones are far too expensive.

Many third-world countries have long responded to the high cost
of patented drugs by copying them, sometimes for a tenth of the
patented price. The pharmaceutical industry argues that this
pirating discourages the search for new medicines, as patented
drugs are priced high in part to allow manufacturers to recover
the research and development costs of all their projects, even
the unsuccessful ones.

The drug companies, and the Clinton Administration's trade
negotiators, have fought the efforts of third-world countries to
manufacture or import cheap versions of still-patented drugs.

American trade pressure on Thailand throughout the 1990's, for
example, caused the country to put restrictions on its
manufacture of cheap patented drugs and ban their import, which
AIDS doctors say reduced the country's ability to fight the
disease.

What really worry the drug industry today, however, are the new
intellectual property rules of the World Trade Organization.

Over Washington's objections, poor nations won the right to make
patented drugs in certain situations, especially when there is a
"national emergency." While Washington says it objects to
technicalities in the new South African law, the larger reason
trade officials have pressed so hard is that the industry fears
South Africa could set precedents, within the world's trade
rules, for the manufacture of cheap drugs.

Drug makers have sued in South African courts to block the law.

While defending intellectual property is important, the
narrowness of the Administration's views is dismaying.
Pharmaceutical companies would lose little if they found legal
and controllable ways to let poor countries -- which offer scant
market anyway -- reproduce drugs or buy them cheaply.

In addition, some of the most important AIDS drugs were
discovered in the National Institutes of Health, or with
Government grants.

Two examples are ddI and the protease inhibitor Norvir. That
financing may well give Washington the right to allow the World
Health Organization to license the drugs' manufacture, for sale
only in poor nations in case of emergency. The Administration
should explore this option for all such vital medicines developed
at taxpayer expense. The desires of America's pharmaceutical
companies have been the overwhelming force driving American
policy on the issue of drugs in poor nations. 

Surely the needs of 35 million people infected with H.I.V.
worldwide should count for more.

-- 
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