[Ip-health] WSJ editorial bashing WHO, GFATM and use of generic drugs in general

[Mike Palmedo]

The main point of this editorial seems to be that the US should go out
of its way to make sure generics are NOT purchased by WHO or the Global
Fund.

This editorial says that the "whole purpose" of the Global Fund is to
pay for "more expensive" - specifically non-generic - treatments.  It
continues on to propose that the US should seek to require that GFATM
funds "not be used on patent-breaking medications."  It closes with a
Roger Bate quote about medicines not being the highest priority when
there are infrastructure needs.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107464422387507052,00.html?mod=opinion%5Fmain%5Freview%5Fand%5Foutlooks

WHO's Bad Medicine
Wall Street Journal Editorial
January 21, 2004

For a cautionary tale on using politicized international aid
organizations to combat Third World disease, we encourage someone in the
Bush Administration to grab a copy of this week's Lancet, the British
medical journal.

The magazine reports that United Nations-led efforts to treat malaria
victims in Africa have actually increased the number of deaths. Around
one million people, mostly African children, die each year from the
mosquito-borne epidemic. The U.N.'s World Health Organization and the
Global Fund for AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, which was set up in 2002
to finance prevention programs, are accused of using treatments that
they know to be ineffective.

According to the Lancet, the aid agencies have continued to recommend
off-patent drugs chloroquine and SP, which once worked but began failing
in the 1970s as the parasite developed resistance. The most effective
malaria treatments available today are Artemesinin Combination Therapies
(ACTs), patented drugs that not only clear parasites from the blood more
quickly but also reduce the chances that drug resistance will develop.

It's true that off-patent drugs are cheaper, but the whole purpose of
the Global Fund is to pay for the more expensive treatments that poor
countries can't afford. Instead, and in violation of their own policies,
the Global Fund and WHO have been supplying Africans with useless drugs.

Sad to say, part of the reason seems to be ideological. It's well-known
that activist groups like WHO and the Global Fund frown on patent laws
and would rather employ off-patent medicines or cheap knockoffs produced
in places like India and Argentina. The tragedy is that this aversion to
enriching companies like Novartis and GSK that produce effective
treatments endangers tens of thousands of lives.

Last year, President Bush announced a five-year, $15 billion initiative
to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, and some of the money is
slated to go through the Global Fund. But given how it has bungled the
malaria epidemic, the Administration might want to reconsider. The U.S.
is by far the world's largest single donor to the fight against AIDS in
the Third World. Americans also fund the world's drug research, and it
makes little sense for us to give money to anti-patent organizations
that would undermine the property laws and protections that lead to new
and better therapies.

An alternative would be to attach a requirement that the money not be
used on patent-breaking medications -- let alone ineffective off-patent
treatments. Better still, the U.S. could encourage more public-private
partnerships. In 1999, the Gates Foundation teamed up with Merck and the
Botswana government to prevent the spread of AIDS. The epidemic has
since reached a plateau in that southern Africa nation.

Such partnerships also contribute to building vital medical
infrastructure, says Roger Bate, who researches health issues in the
developing world at the American Enterprise Institute. "You can't treat
people if there aren't hospitals, or if the hospitals don't have
electricity or the right machines or the right medical staff," says Mr.
Bate. In such extremely poor countries as Guinea-Bissau or Mozambique,
purchasing drugs is not the highest health priority.

The Lancet evidence shows that Mr. Bush has every right to demand that
organizations like the Global Fund do better with U.S. tax dollars, or
do without them.