[Ip-health] Clinton endorses Thai, Brazil compulsory licenses

[robert weissman]

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Standing next to Thailand
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/thailand/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>'s
health minister, Mr. Clinton also forcefully endorsed recent decisions
by Thailand and Brazil
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/brazil/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>
to break patents held by American pharmaceutical companies that are
charging prices Mr. Clinton described as exorbitant, but that drug
company officials said were reasonable.

"No company will live or die because of high price premiums for AIDS
drugs in middle-income countries, but patients may," he said.

[snip]


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/world/09aidsdrugs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

New York Times
May 9, 2007


  Clinton Foundation Announces a Bargain on Generic AIDS Drugs

By CELIA W. DUGGER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/celia_w_dugger/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

Former President Bill Clinton
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bill_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
announced yesterday that his foundation had negotiated deep price
reductions for generic versions of costly, second-line AIDS
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/aids/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
drugs needed when the original medicines fail, as well as for less
toxic, easier-to-use first-line medicines combined in a pill that can be
taken once a day.

Standing next to Thailand
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/thailand/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>'s
health minister, Mr. Clinton also forcefully endorsed recent decisions
by Thailand and Brazil
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/brazil/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>
to break patents held by American pharmaceutical companies that are
charging prices Mr. Clinton described as exorbitant, but that drug
company officials said were reasonable.

"No company will live or die because of high price premiums for AIDS
drugs in middle-income countries, but patients may," he said.

The new prices would halve the cost of the drugs for better-off
developing countries in Latin America and Asia and cut prices by 25
percent in poor countries, which were already paying lower prices, the
foundation said. The second-line medicines will be bought with more than
$100 million raised by a group of countries led by France. The improved
first-line therapies will largely be financed by the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other donors.

Second-line drugs have typically cost about 10 times as much as
first-line therapies. Costs have ballooned in Brazil and Thailand, which
began programs to provide universal access to AIDS treatment years
before African countries did, as patients have developed resistance to
generic first-line treatments and have moved to brand-name second-line
drugs.

The Clinton Foundation's willingness to buy the generic drugs from the
Indian manufacturers Cipla and Matrix will give developing countries
leverage in bargaining with American companies for lower prices on
branded antiretroviral drugs and may embolden some to follow Brazil and
Thailand in overriding patents, AIDS activists said.

But developing countries still have reason to worry about retaliation
from drug companies and trade sanctions by the United States. This year,
Abbott Laboratories
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/abbott_laboratories/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
based in Illinois, withdrew new drugs, including those for high blood
pressure
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/bloodpressure/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
and AIDS, that it had planned to introduce in Thailand until the
override on Abbott's patent on the second-line drug, Kaletra.

United States trade officials last week put Thailand on a watch list for
countries inadequately safeguarding the intellectual property rights of
American companies, noting the overriding of drug patents.

Tido von Shoen-Angerer, who leads the campaign by Doctors Without
Borders
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/doctors_without_borders/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
for access to medicines, said he was unsure whether the recent
developments would encourage developing countries to exercise their
rights under international trade rules more freely to make or import
generic drugs.

"There's a strong chilling effect from the U.S. action," he said.

Drug company officials yesterday strongly defended their policies of
charging better-off developing countries more for AIDS drugs than they
did for poor countries, as well as the role of patents, which give
inventor companies a monopoly on the sale of a drug, in stimulating the
development of new drugs.

Jennifer Smoter, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said patents were needed "to
ensure innovation in the future" but declined to respond to Mr.
Clinton's comment that "Abbott has been almost alone in its hard-line
position here over what I consider to be a life and death matter."

Abbott had been charging $2,200 annually per patient for Kaletra in
middle-income developing countries, which include India, China, Brazil
and Ukraine. Last month, it dropped the price to $1,000. The
foundation's new price for the generic is $695.

Jeffrey L. Sturchio, a vice president at Merck
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/merck_and_company/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
in New Jersey, says his company strives to balance providing the
broadest possible access to AIDS drugs while maintaining financial
incentives to attract companies to conduct research and development on
new drugs.

Brazil and Thailand have overridden Merck's patent on the AIDS drug
efavirenz, an ingredient of the new, improved first-line AIDS therapies.
Merck had been charging Brazil $577 annually per patient, a price it
agreed to drop to $400 a year after Brazil said it was considering
overriding the patent. The Clinton Foundation's new price for the
generic drug is $164.