[Ip-health] Doug Ireland's column in POZ on TRIPS+ FTAs

[Mike Palmedo]

http://www.poz.com/articles/1056_7008.shtml

Under the Counter

by Doug Ireland
POZ Magazine
July 2006

Doug Ireland prescribes a violent reaction to the Bush/Pharma axis

Without a word of protest from the national AIDS organizations, the Bush
administration, behind closed doors, has been sabotaging the ability of
the world=92s poorest countries to produce or buy cheap, generic AIDS
meds. Here=92s the background: In November 2001, after a long fight
against Big Pharma=92s monopolization of AIDS-drug production, a World
Trade Organization meeting in Doha, Qatar, agreed that poor countries
should have the right to break the multinational drug companies=92 patent
monopoly if they declared a national AIDS emergency. The U.S. was among
the 142 countries signing this breakthrough agreement, under which poor
countries could make their own AIDS meds cheaply or buy generic versions
from a producing country (like India), thus bypassing Big Pharma.

This was a huge victory, won after years of struggle by AIDS and
nongovernmental public-health-advocacy organizations around the world.
The Doha Declaration began to save thousands of lives, by getting cheap,
life-prolonging meds into the hands of HIV positive people in poorer
nations. But the Bush administration is morbidly blackmailing poor
countries into forfeiting their production rights under that treaty if
they want (so-called) Free Trade Agreements with the U.S. Either the
poor countries refuse to knuckle under and scuttle these bilateral and
regional trade deals=97worth billions=97with Washington, or they accept the
deals and raise the price of AIDS meds beyond the reach of the poor.

This unconscionable blackmail has made many countries, including six in
Latin America, cede their rights to break the Big Pharma AIDS drug
monopoly. Washington has launched tough negotiations with a raft of poor
countries hard hit by AIDS, from Thailand to five southern African
lands, including Botswana and South Africa. If Thailand signs the U.S.
trade proposal, =93Those who require the essential drugs but cannot afford
them-=97they will have to die,=94 says Suwit Wibulpolpraset, MD, the Thai
Public Health Ministry official coordinating his country=92s response to
the Bush administration=92s arm-breaking trade deal that rolls back the
Doha agreement. And the same goes for the other nations beaten with
Washington=92s big stick.

Bush and his cronies =93began this trade blackmail in 2002, after a group
of the largest Big Pharma companies=97headed by Pfizer CEO Hank
McKinnell=97raised $30 million for the Republicans=92 congressional
campaigns that year,=94 says James Love, of the Consumer Project on
Technology, the international point man in winning the patent-breaking
Doha agreement and an unsung hero in the fight for cheap AIDS meds. The
effect of these deals, Love says, is to force poor countries into
enacting =93superpatents=94 that prolong U.S. drugmakers=92 monopolies and
sharply limit the conditions under which their AIDS patents can be broken.

Though millions of lives are at stake in these sordid and lethal trade
deals, the major U.S. AIDS organizations, like AIDS Action=97which calls
itself =93the national voice on AIDS=94=97and the National Association of
People With AIDS, have been AWOL from the fight against them. And since
the AIDS advocates are silent, Washington can negotiate these murderous
deals at economic gunpoint with little media notice.

I=92m angry at our national AIDS groups for their isolationism, for their
failure to lead a huge public outcry against the iniquitous Bush
administration, which values Big Pharma=92s profits ahead of the lives of
poor people with HIV.

Washington should not be allowed to tear up its commitments without any
protest from those who pretend to speak for us on AIDS.