[Ip-health] Rep. Sherrod Brown's letter to editor of Washington Times on FDCs

[Mike Palmedo]

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040413-090304-1327r.htm

Trickle down AIDS relief?

In his Thursday Op-Ed column, "Activists against Africa," Robert
Goldberg chastises the World Health Organization (WHO) for facilitating
the use of generic AIDS drug combinations. His premise is that generic
AIDS drug combinations are necessarily of lesser quality than their more
expensive brand-name counterparts. The only supporting evidence he
provides is a widely disputed study focusing on the treatment of
malaria, not AIDS.

About one year earlier, Mr. Goldberg wrote: "If President Bush wants to
stop the AIDS epidemic ... he should scrap his proposed $15 billion plan
to seed the African continent and the Caribbean with AIDS drugs and
spend the money elsewhere" (National Review Online, Feb. 7, 2003). Are
we to believe that Mr. Goldberg, who one year ago opposed devoting any
U.S. dollars to global AIDS drugs, suddenly cares about the quality of
those medicines?

In that same National Review editorial, Mr. Goldberg wrote that the Bush
plan would "ignore Africa's own failure to focus time, attention, and
money on the horrific public-health situation, which can only be
addressed through economic growth and free trade."

So, the United States should turn its back on the millions of people who
have AIDS and hold our breath until "economic growth and free trade"
solve the AIDS crisis?

Mr. Goldberg has every right to voice his preposterous opinions on the
AIDS crisis, but what possessed your paper to publish them?

REP. SHERROD BROWN
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington