-Caveat Lector- -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Aids drugs: US taking Brazil to WTO over patents Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 14:27:44 -0500 (CDT) From: Sanjoy Mahajan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Organization: ? To: undisclosed-recipients:; The pirates never stop. Here are two articles from Friday's _Guardian_: the first about the US taking Brazil to the WTO's tribunal (which favors big business even more than normal courts) the second about how South Africa doesn't much plan to use the law they just won the battle over. -Sanjoy http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4172774,00.html Legal roadshow rolls on to Brazil Sarah Boseley, health editor Friday April 20, 2001 The Guardian (London) The collapse of the drug companies' court case against the South African government is likely to be just the first victory in the battle for cheaper medicines in developing countries. Although the spotlight is on Pretoria, which has not yet shown any inclination to use the Aids drugs which it can now legally obtain at lower prices, a second legal front has already been opened in Brazil, a country hailed as a shining example of Aids treatment in the developing world. It is richer than South Africa and has 500,000 fewer HIV-positive patients, but that does not diminish its achievement in distributing life-saving anti-retroviral drugs to the vast majority of patients who need them. It has done so by making cheap generic copies of some drugs and buying others from generic manufacturers in India. Since 1996, when it began to provide free anti-retroviral drugs, it has halved the Aids death rate and reduced the number confined to hospital by 80%. But now Brazil is coming under serious attack. Washington, at the behest of the pharmaceuticals companies, is taking it to a disciplinary tribunal of the World Trade Organisation. It alleges that Brazil is in breach of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) agreement, which enshrines patent protection for 20 years. If Brazil loses the case it will be forced to change its laws or face trade sanctions. Brazil has made or imported 10 types of drugs quite legally, because they were patented before Brazil's Trips-compliant law came into force in 1997. Its battle is for drug patented since then. The action lodged by the US at the WTO in January takes issue with Article 68 of Brazil's 1996 Industrial Property Act, which says it can legally make or import a generic version of a drug if the patent-holding company fails to manufacture it in Brazil - local production making it cheaper - within three years. The clause has not yet been used. Campaigners say that the companies and their allies are picking a fight with local legislation to intimidate developing countries into buying medicines at prices set by the big companies. Michael Bailey, a senior policy adviser to Oxfam, said: "It is part of the systematic intimidation of Brazil and developing countries to say if you step out of what we define as the line on intellectual property, we will clobber you in the courts." Developing countries are supposed to endorse Trips by 2005, and Oxfam sees the Brazilian case as a clear signal to Argentina and India, both of which make generic drugs and are preparing their own Trips-compliant law. Brazil recently won a battle with Merck, manufacturers of efavirenz, one of the two patented drugs on which Brazil spends a third of its Aids drugs budget. The state pharmaceutical company imported efavirenz made in India, saying it wanted to research the possibility of making its own copy. Merck threatened legal action, but it has now reduced the price of its brand of efavirenz, Stocrin, by more than half. Brazil is trying the same tactics on Roche, producers of the second drug, nelfinavir. Despite the publicity disaster in Pretoria, the US will be reluctant to withdraw its case against Brazil. The biggest nightmare for the pharmaceutical industry is the possibility that cheap generic versions of their new drugs may end up in the US. ====================================================================== http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4172747,00.html ANC urged to deliver Aids drugs As pharmaceutical firms cave in, South Africans call on the state to exploit the victory and distribute medicines. Chris McGreal in Pretoria Friday April 20, 2001 The Guardian (London) Within hours of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies abandoning their court case against South African legislation aimed at getting cheaper medicines to the poor, the battleground shifted to the government's plans for implementing the law. Moments after the industry's lawyers told the high court in Pretoria yesterday that the companies had unconditionally dropped their case, hundreds of spectators in the gallery ululated and sang. Many were HIV-positive and greeted the court victory as a new lease of life. But although the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, greeted the companies' humiliating climbdown by saying the legal battle reminded her of the struggle against apartheid, she upset the government's allies by adding that the act will not be used to ensure the widespread distribution of anti-retroviral drugs against Aids. The government has repeatedly argued that whatever the perception overseas, the case was about access not to Aids drugs but to a broad range of medicines, including antibiotics, anti-malarial drugs and some treatments that deal with opportunistic infections caused by HIV. But the government may come to see its legal victory as a hollow one, because large numbers of people - one-in-nine of the population are HIV-positive - regarded the court battle as primarily a struggle for drugs to combat the pandemic. Aids rights groups at the forefront in pressing the industry to abandon its case, such as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), and foreign campaigners such as Oxfam and Midecins sans Frontihres have long seen the legislation as removing one of the government's main arguments in justification of its reluctance to distribute anti-retrovirals in the public health service: cost. "Every South African can be proud we stood firm against the most powerful lobby in the world, the drug companies. But now another struggle begins," said TAC's leader, Zackie Achmat. "The government told the court under oath that anti-retrovirals are effective against Aids. The difficult job starts now, to ensure our government mobilises the resources it has to implement an appropriate treatment plan for Aids. "We will use the law to protect people's lives. Within months to years we will have anti-retrovirals in our public health service." Kevin Watkins, of Oxfam, who said that as a veteran of lost causes it was good to finally win one, agreed. "If the government doesn't grasp the opportunity all we have fought for will be lost. The next battle starts here," he said. Aids rights groups intend to begin by suing pharmaceutical companies which have offered cheap anti-retroviral drugs to South Africa's public but not its private sector. Given the government's continued refusal to buy anti-retrovirals, the only access to them in South Africa is in the private sector, where they remain extremely expensive. "People who want to access anti-retrovirals can go to the private sector," Dr Tshabalala-Msimang said yesterday. Aids rights groups say they will turn their campaign on the government if it does not change its attitude towards anti-retrovirals. The health minister argues that doubts remain about the effectiveness and safety of anti-retrovirals, and that South Africa lacks the extensive infrastructure of clinics and doctors required to distribute the drugs widely. "It is erroneous to believe that South Africa doesn't give treatment to people with HIV or Aids," she said. "We treat pneumonia, meningitis, skin diseases and thrush. Just because we don't provide anti-retrovirals, it is not correct to say we don't treat people with HIV or full-blown Aids." But most people who are HIV-positive want drugs that keep Aids at bay, not just those that treat opportunistic infections. And critics say that with more than half the population living in urban areas and within striking distance of big hospitals, the importation of much cheaper anti-retrovirals could benefit large numbers of people. The South African trade union confederation, which is a close but increasingly critical ally of the ruling African National Congress, said yesterday that if the government still could not afford anti-retrovirals then the country's biggest employers - particularly the mining companies - should use the new law to supply drugs direct to their HIV-positive workers. The drug companies secured no changes in the law during their talks with the government before they abandoned the case. But they did receive a restatement of South Africa's commitment to adhere to the international patent laws, which permit the government to import generic drugs or brand names bought from a cheaper source deal with health emergencies. Dr Tshabalala-Msimang said the breakthrough in the negotiations came when the pharmaceutical companies realised that they could not win the legal case at the high court and approached the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, to smooth the way for a settlement. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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