[Ip-health] CQ Weekly - The Shadowy Drug Lobby That Has Thailand In Its Sites

[Mike Palmedo]

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The Shadowy Drug Lobby That Has Thailand in Its Sites

By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff
CQ WEEKLY =96 VANTAGE POINT
May 14, 2007 =96 Page 1396

Don=92t look now, but infringing on a prescription drug patent seems to be
a violation of human rights.

That=92s just one of the oddities in a battle brewing between the
government of Thailand and a Washington-based advocacy group called USA
for Innovation. Late last month, the group took out a full-page ad in
The Wall Street Journal, likening the government of Thai Prime Minister
Surayud Chulanont, who came to power in the wake of a military coup last
summer, to the repressive regime in neighboring Myanmar, a longtime and
often brutal violator of basic human rights.

It turned out, however, that the ad=92s sponsors saw the Thai regime=92s
main trespass as pharmaceutical, not strictly political: It had recently
approved the importation from India of some generic treatments for AIDS
and heart disease. =93Such theft,=94 the group thundered, =93costs America
$250 billion and 750,000 jobs per year.=94

Perhaps. But the rest of the international human rights community isn=92t
exactly rallying to what appears to be a crusade captained by American
drug companies. Indeed, human rights activists say that World Trade
Organization (WTO) rules give the Thai government every right to make
cheaper generic drugs available to its citizens., under the provisions
of =93compulsory licensing=94 =97 ie., a mandate for patent holders to perm=
it
other companies to make the same product. Pharmaceutical companies
reached an initial round of compulsory licensing agreements in the
1990s, when South Africa sought to make AIDS treatments more widely
available to its impoverished AIDS-afflicted citizens.

In fact, says Robert Weissman, director of the human rights group
Essential Action, =93Thailand is doing exactly what anyone who cares about
public health would want them to do.=94

In 2001, the World Trade Organization revised its rules to permit any
country to issue compulsory licenses for any drug it pleases, provided
that a generic manufacturer first tries to negotiate a deal with the
patent holder.

American drugmakers therefore aren=92t objecting to Thailand=92s importatio=
n
of cheaper generic substitutes for the U.S.-made AIDS treatments: Merck
& Co.=92s Stocrin and Abbott Laboratories=92 Kaletra. Rather, they are
taking issue with Thailand=92s approval of the substitute heart medicine =
=97
a copy of the Plavix pill, manufactured jointly by Bristol-Myers Squibb
Co. and Sanofi-Aventis. That move potentially could make compulsory
licensing a routine principle for nations importing all kinds of
pharmaceuticals.

Which would seem, in turn, to be the reason that Congress has lately
taken up the cause of USA for Innovation =97 even though the group=92s drug
industry supporters have yet to make themselves officially known. In
March, four Democratic senators =97 Robert Menendez and Frank R.
Lautenberg of New Jersey, Dianne Feinstein of California and Thomas R.
Carper of Delaware =97 as well as Independent Joseph I. Lieberman of
Connecticut, wrote to U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab asking
her =93to encourage the Royal Thai Government to consult with our
innovative companies,=94 to address the new Thai policy seeking =93to
expropriate patents on all manner of innovative medicines not used to
address urgent public health needs.=94

And not long after that, at the end of April, Schwab=92s office added
Thailand to a priority watch list of violators of U.S. intellectual
property rights. At a press briefing that day, USTR official Victoria
Espinel said her office was not accusing Thailand of violating WTO
rules; it was, rather, noting the new licensing among a number of
unspecified intellectual property concerns in the Thai case.

International trade watchers again weren=92t buying the reasoning. The
USTR decision came across as =93arbitrary and political,=94 says James Love=
,
director of Knowledge Ecology International, a Washington advocacy group
that focuses on expanding drug availability in the developing world.
=93It=92s just a list of people that lobby groups want put on the list.=94

Still, no one seems to know with certainty just who these particular
lobbyists are. Mark Grayson, a spokesman for the main prescription drug
trade group PhRMA, says it does not fund USA for Innovation. A Merck
spokesman also denied that it had provided funding. Neither Abbott
Laboratories nor Bristol-Myers Squibb responded to requests for comment.
Ken Adelman, the top arms control negotiator in the Reagan
administration, is listed as USA for Innovation=92s executive director but
only offered a statement reiterating the content of the group=92s ad campai=
gn.

But Adelman=92s other job, as a senior counselor to the public relations
firm Edelman, has stirred great interest in the Thai press. Edelman has
several drug industry clients, and until last week the company
represented Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai prime minister. Edelman
spokesman Todd McGovern would not confirm or deny that the firm was
involved.

--
Mike Palmedo
Research Coordinator
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
American University, Washington College of Law
4910 Massachutsetts Ave., NW Washington, DC 20016
T - 202-274-4442 | F 202-274-0659
mpalmedo@wcl.american.edu