Act Up Paris on Bristol-Myers Squibb: "Secure The Profit" (in English)

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

This is a comment on the BMS African HIV/AIDS program, from Act Up
Paris.

Jamie

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Subject: Act Up Paris on Bristol-Myers Squibb: "Secure The Profit" (in English)
     Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 17:36:51 +0100
    From: MAHA <MAHA@espaceweb.ch>

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Act Up Paris Press Release - November, 11, 1999
Bristol-Myers Squibb : " Secure The Profit "

You do not have to be particularly cynical to see « Secure The Future » BMS
laboratories' initiative for Africa, presented yesterday during a press
conference in Paris, as little more than a marketing ploy.
Even though BMS has been trumpeting loudly about their involvement in this
program, they still however refuse to tackle the question of drug tariffs,
which is today the most important question as far as AIDS is concerned.

The launching of this program in Spring 1999 took place while the talks
between South Africa and the pharmaceutical industry - which benefits from
the blind support of the American government - were reaching their most
crucial and difficult point.
South Africa, where a fifth of the population is infected with AIDS, has
been subject to pressure and threats of economic retaliation for over a
year. Pharmaceutical companies, which sell their drugs at prohibitive
prices, try by all means to avoid the South African government including in
its new legislation on medication compulsory licensing, a legal clause in
the WTO agreements authorizng any country to produce locally indispensable
and otherwise unaffordable medical treatments for their PWAs when an AIDS
epidemic represents a health crisis.

In this context, the announcement of the  Secure The Future  program is
above all an attempt by BMS to improve their image.

What this program offers is only a contribution among many others, along
with those led by other pharmaceutical companies or government programs,
international initiatives or actions by sponsors.  Last spring, Bill
Clinton declared a contribution of 100 millions US$ for the struggle
against AIDS. During a recent Commonwealth meeting in South Africa, Tony
Blair made similar promises.  France, though timidly, has been involved
financially in a policy of access to treatment in the developing countries.
Thus, the BMS initiative is not exceptional.

As Peter Piot said during BMS  last press conference, the epidemic is
exploding in the developing countries: nearly 3 million people died of AIDS
this year, 30 million PWAs have no access to treatment and are therefore
condemned.

BMS profits are enormous: US$ 1 billion in the last trimester of 1999, over
US$ 4,174 billion forecast for 1999.  d4T brought US$ 302,000,000 in 1998
and ddI brought US$ 99,000,000 for the BMS companie last year. Whereas
research and development for the latter treatment - it is well known - was
financed by the American administration and not by the laboratory.

The pharmaceutical industry is amongst the first to benefit from the global
economy, but they will not adapt to the rules it imposes, and they deny the
evidence: their pricing policy kills.

The few programs of access to anti-retroviral treatments launched in
Southern Africa (Ivory Coast, Senegal, Uganda, etc) prove that today the
price of medication is the first obstacle to improving access to treatment.

BMS does not have a monopoly on charity but, along with other companies, it
exerts a monopoly over drug patents and that is precisely what is the
problem today for the 30 million PWAs who have no access to care.

Over the last 8 months, BMS has been advertising their "Secure The Future
program, while refusing, a month before the opening of WTO discussions in
Seattle, to consider the actual stakes involved: market segmentation,
adapting the prices of drugs to the payment abilities of the developing
countries.

Act-Up Paris denounces this criminal attitude.

Act Up Paris 18 November 1999



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James Love / Director, Consumer Project on Technology
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