Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| 3 dead - time to change the law on TRIPS (some lives are worth more then others) |
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| NewJehad |
| 11/19/01 at 08:36:30 |
KCom Journal 3 dead - time to change the law on TRIPS Now that the US is in desperate need of strong antibiotics it must be time to change the laws regarding pharmaceutical patents. Three Americans are obviously worth more than thousands of Africans. In a post room near Capitol Hill, two men unwittingly inhaled lethal anthrax spores sent flying invisibly through the air by a letter-processing machine. In Johannesburg and Nairobi and countless other African cities and in smaller towns and villages, thousands of men and women every day are unwittingly passing to each other a lethal virus; HIV. In a few decades life expectancy in Africa has been cut dramatically, perhaps as a result of HIV. To date three men have now died of anthrax in the US. Tens of thousands of Africans die of HIV/Aids every year. There is a huge disparity in the number of dead in each of these cases. What links them is a ferocious battle over the patents on the drugs used to treat them, granted to pharmaceutical companies. Drug companies produce what they think the market will buy and charge what the market will bear. However some say that in times of public health crisis - be it an anthrax attack or an Aids epidemic - patent protection must be torn down in the interests of public health. A powerful antibiotic made by Bayer with the brand name of ciprofloxacin (Cipro) is the best chance of life for anyone who has inhaled anthrax spores. In the US it will be under patent until 2004. It is now in very great demand and the US government wants to stockpile 1.2 billion pills. Bayer can produce about 15 million a week. Five generic companies have already received US Food and Drug Administration clearance for the quality of their ciprofloxacin, and could immediately be asked to manufacture the drug. The US is not the only country that wants a stash of Cipro. Canada did not think twice about the issue. Faced with the likelihood of a limited supply from Bayer, it commissioned the Canadian company Apotec to produce a generic copy. It agreed to deliver 1m tablets by November 8. The result has been uproar from all sides. Bayer threatened to sue the Canadian government for breach of patent, while the US, closest friend and staunch defender of the pharmaceutical industry, and the patent system, has been embarrassed by it all. On Tuesday (23/10/01) the Canadian government backed down and promised to respect Bayer's patent until the Canadian expiry date of 2003, in return for an undertaking that Bayer would deliver the drugs within two days of any anthrax attack. It now faces paying for it twice because the contract with Apotec still stands, although the medicine will not be used unless Bayer fails to deliver. The fiasco is embarrassing for the US government because Canada has until now, been fully behind the US-led efforts to enforce respect for patents in the developing world. Drug patents last for 20 years. Not all countries have recognised them in the past, but all the member states of the WTO are being brought into line through the TRIPS (trade related intellectual property rights) agreement. By 2006, even the poorest member states in Africa will have had to pass their own national legislation to become TRIPS-compliant and fully signed-up respecters of patents on new drugs. But for many years, the US has been acting as the industry's policeman, threatening trade sanctions against countries such as Thailand when it started to make cheap copies of drugs for the opportunistic infections that kill people whose immune systems are knocked out by HIV. There are clauses within the TRIPS agreement that are intended as a "get-out" for countries facing a health crisis such as the Aids epidemic or - just as easily argued - tuberculosis and malaria. But when the South African government tried to pass legislation that would allow it to import drugs that are cheaper elsewhere, it first came under serious pressure from the US trade representative and then found itself in court. Earlier this year 39 pharmaceutical companies tried to sue the South African government (with the help of the US) in order to prevent them importing affordably cheap medicines for South Africa’s HIV-positive population. However the US government can override patents with relative impunity. In September 2001, 178 compulsory licences (the permission to disregard a patent, which Canada gave to Apotec) were issued in the US with regard to software products. The patent holder does not lose - in the US at least - because he will be compensated. But on drug patents, the US government usually does not give in. The growing concern over the anthrax attacks has brought the patent issue - and the parallels between the US health crisis and the Aids epidemic, in Africa - to public attention in the US. The US is now experiencing a little of what developing countries suffer. Now the US and Canada are facing a shortage and a problem of providing the medicines that the government thinks are needed to protect health, the patent is a barrier to doing that and they are looking for ways of overcoming that. Even highly developed countries can be overwhelmed by the system when it tries to take steps to protect public health. That is just how the African countries feel. The most sophisticated countries in the world are getting just a taste of what it is like to have a deadly illness on the move and lack the medicines to deal with it. The west created the TRIPS concept and now they are getting a taste of their own medicine. Source: Kcom Journal Comment: "If you wish to comment on this article please email article@khilafah.com" Related Item: |
| Re: 3 dead - time to change the law on TRIPS (some lives are worth more then others) |
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| haaris |
| 11/19/01 at 09:12:58 |
| [slm] Doesn't it make you sick that, in the interests of "national security", human rights can be "suspended" ("derogated from" in official parlance) but business rights? No, that's a different matter ... |
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