[Ip-health] Amir: why efforts to weaken patent protection will not only do little to help people with HIV in the poorest nations obtain the drugs they need; it will also show why it will undermine the investment in medicines that can save lives and reduce medical spending where the human and economic burden is the greates

[James Love]

Center for Medical Progress


PRESS ADVISORY	Contact:  Lindsay M.Young
	Communications Director
	212-599-7000, Ext. 315
	lmy@manhattan-institute.org

Patents for Antiretroviral Drugs:
Help or Hinder the Search for a Solution
to AIDS Treatment in Africa?

Presentation by

Dr. Amir Attaran
Center for International Development, Harvard University

Dr. Frank Lichtenberg
Courtney C. Brown Prof. of Business, Columbia University


With 27 million people in Africa now infected with HIV and likely to die
within a decade, AIDS is already the worst pandemic since the Black
Death in 1347, and will surpass even this soon. Conventional wisdom is
that patents are the leading reason why Africans cannot now access the
life-saving drugs that they need, but recent research by Dr. Attaran in
the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that the role of
patents is eclipsed by the much larger failure of wealthy governments,
African governments cannot possibly afford otherwise. 

This briefing will discuss why efforts to weaken patent protection will
not only do little to help people with HIV in the poorest nations obtain
the drugs they need; it will also show why it will undermine the
investment in medicines that can save lives and reduce medical spending
where the human and economic burden is the greatest. 


	When: 	Tuesday, December 4th, 2001
		11 A.M. - 12 P.M.

	Place:	Inter-Continental Hotel 
		112 Central Park South, btw. 6th & 7th Avenues
		New York City

-- 
James Love
Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030 fax 1.202.234.5176 mobile 1.202.361.3040