[Ip-health] Harvard Crimson: Students Protest Drug Policy

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=3D518559

Students Protest Drug Policy
Published On 4/27/2007 2:46:16 AM

Crimson Staff Writer

A group of Harvard students travelled to the Abbott Laboratories
facility in Worcester, Mass., yesterday afternoon to protest the
pharmaceutical company=92s recent decision not to allow Thailand=92s
government to produce generic versions of its Kaletra AIDS drug.

The protest, organized by the Harvard chapter of the National Student
AIDS Coalition, was timed to coincide with the Illinois-based
pharmaceutical company=92s shareholder meeting today.

In January, Thailand issued a =93compulsory license=94 that would have
allowed companies to produce generic versions of Kaletra and Aluvia,
another AIDS drug, an action that was legal under World Trade
Organization regulations and undertaken to make drugs more accessible
to the population. Five hundred thousand people in Thailand are living
with HIV, according to a United Nations report.

Yesterday=92s protesters demanded that Abbott Laboratories immediately
re-register Kaletra, Aluvia, and six other medications it pulled from
the Thailand market, and grant other developing nations the rights to
produce generic versions of its medications at affordable prices.

=93We had to do something. Abbott is counting on activists not being
strong, that civil society is not going to make an outry,=94 said Matthew
F. Basilico =9208, the press liaison for the protest. =93Making generic
versions of these drugs available will save many more lives, and take
away a slight margin or profits. What [Abbott is] doing is childish,
petty, and awful.=94

Representatives for Abbott could not be reached for comment. But a
spokesman for the company told the AP last month that the decision not
to allow production of generic drugs was made because Thailand was
ignoring patent laws.

=93Thailand has revoked the patent on our medicine, ignoring the patent
system. Under these circumstances, we have elected not to introduce new
medicines there,=94 Dirk Van Eeden, public affairs director of Abbott
International, told the Associated Press (AP).

Wearing shirts reading =93Worldwide Boycott Abbott=94 and =93Our labs, our
drugs, our responsibility,=94 the group engaged in chants such as =93Hey
Abbott, get off it, people over profit,=94 and shaking symbolic pill
bottles with pennies inside.

The initial plan for yesterday=92s protest=97which featured 22 Harvard
students along with nearly 50 other people, including students from
University of Massachusetts Medical School and Clark University Medical
School=97was to march up to the building chanting, to listen to several
addresses by speakers, and then to send a delegation of people inside
to fill a mock prescription for Kaletra for the people of Thailand,
which was presumably going to be denied, according to Luke M. Messac
=9208.

However, the protestors were denied entrance into the facility by
security guards. At that point, the decision was made to hold the rest
of the protest in front of the sign at the entrance to facility
grounds.

=93What Abbott is doing is not only a human rights violation, but a crime
under Thai law,=94 said Brook K. Baker, a Northeastern University Law
professor, in a speech yesterday. =93What [Thailand has] done is
perfectly legal under World Trade Organization regulations, and yet
Abbott is refusing the release the patent.=94

After speeches, the protest culminated in a die-in, where the =93denied
prescription=94 was carried past the protestors, who fell to the ground,
pretending to have died.

Protests similar to the one in Worcester also took place yesterday in
Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, Salem, Ore., Chapel
Hill, N.C., and other cities throughout the country.

=97Staff writer Yelena S. Mironova can be reached at
mironova@fas.harvard.edu.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=3D518559

---------------------------------
Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
voice +41.22.791.6727
fax +41.22.723.2988
mobile +41 76 508 0997
thiru@keionline.org