I don't know if University of MN issues are considered
mpls issues or not so pardon me if I'm out of step! I
thought members might find the national attention to
this controversy to be of interest.
Thanks, David Strand
Loring Park
Ward 7
--- "William K. Dobbs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 00:15:59 -0400
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: "William K. Dobbs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: GP-LBGT Re: Article on AIDS drug protest at
> U of MN
> Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> At 02:56 PM 4/14/2001 -0700, you wrote:
> Article from Advocate.com on AIDS drug protests at U
> of MN. Check it out!
> >
> Thanks, David Strand
> >
> Here is the Wall Street Journal article referenced
> by the Advocate online
> edition:
>
> Wall Street Journal [New York, NY]
> April 12, 2001
>
> Student Protesters Target Universities Profiting
> From AIDS Research
>
> By Rachel Zimmerman
>
> The University of Minnesota expects to collect more
> than $300 million in
> royalties from its patent on Ziagen, an AIDS drug
> sold by GlaxoSmithKline
> PLC. Amanda Swarr, a 28-year-old graduate student at
> the school, thinks
> that is outrageous.
>
> "We are furious at the university's complicity in
> the denial of access to
> life-saving medication to poor people across the
> world," Ms. Swarr wrote in
> a leaflet that she proffered on a snowy street
> corner in Minneapolis during
> her spring break. "We are disgusted."
>
> The fight over the price of AIDS drugs in developing
> nations has found a
> new battleground: the college campus. Students at
> the University of
> Minnesota are holding a teach-in today, energized by
> the success that
> students at Yale University claimed for pressuring
> drug maker Bristol-Myers
> Squibb Co. to relinquish patent rights for an AIDS
> drug in South Africa.
> And student activists at other campuses are linking
> with outside activists
> in the AIDS cause.
>
> Student protests are as old as formal education.
> What gives the AIDS
> protests extra leverage is that a few universities
> hold patents on key AIDS
> medications. Other schools' endowments hold stock in
> companies making AIDS
> drugs.
>
> The current wave of indignation, students say, comes
> from the sheer scope
> of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, where 25 million
> people are infected with
> HIV, the AIDS virus, and from the disparity of
> treatment between rich and
> poor, black and white. "It's the biggest political
> crisis of our
> generation," says graduate student Adam Taylor, a
> 25-year-old AIDS activist
> at Harvard University.
>
> Seeds of the protest at the University of Minnesota
> were sown in October
> 1999, when the school won the largest settlement of
> a patent-infringement
> case of any U.S. university. GlaxoSmithKline agreed
> to pay the university
> royalties on world-wide sales of the AIDS drug
> Ziagen, which sells in the
> U.S. for about $3,898 for a year's supply. Minnesota
> argued that Ziagen was
> among several related drugs first patented in the
> 1980s by Robert Vince, a
> professor at the university's college of pharmacy,
> and then licensed to
> Glaxo. Since 1999, the university has received about
> $15 million in
> royalties -- profit deemed a symbol of academic
> greed by students like Ms.
> Swarr.
>
> Ms. Swarr, whose field is women's studies, is a
> veteran protester. She has
> boycotted Nestle SA (for its pro-infant-formula
> policy), Philip Morris Cos.
> (for not pulling out of South Africa in the 1980s),
> Nike Inc. (for its
> labor practices) and Procter & Gamble Inc. (for
> animal testing), among
> others. She believes the university will bow to
> student demands. So far,
> however, the university doesn't seem much moved.
> Mark Rotenberg, general
> counsel at the university, says the school has no
> control over pricing. "I
> think the principal focus of concern about pricing
> should be on the
> pharmaceutical manufacturer and on the governments,"
> he says.
>
> Nancy Pekarek, a spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline,
> suggests that market and
> political forces have a far greater impact than
> student protests in
> determining prices and accessibility. For instance,
> she says the company
> applied for approval of Ziagen in South Africa in
> September 1998, but that
> country still has not acted on the application.
> "It's just sitting there,
> they haven't moved on it," she says.
>
> None of that deters Ms. Swarr, who recently returned
> from a year in South
> Africa, where she worked with AIDS activists from
> the global Treatment
> Action Campaign.
>
> There are close ties between student activists and
> outside activists, and
> their work tends to reinforce each other. Activists
> at Yale -- where the
> student protests against AIDS-drug prices began --
> were keyed up by a Feb.
> 14 letter sent to the university's Office for
> Cooperative Research by
> Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian,
> not-for-profit group. The letter,
> drafted by activist Toby Kasper and signed by Eric
> Goemaere of Doctors
> Without Borders, asked Yale to use its patent on
> Zerit to pressure
> Bristol-Myers Squibb to lower the price of the
> medicine and release its
> patent rights in poor countries.
>
> Amy Kapczynski, a first-year law student at Yale,
> knew of Mr. Kasper
> through friends at Harvard and heard about his plan
> to ask the
> administration for a license to distribute Zerit.
> Already working on AIDS
> issues, she figured she had found the perfect cause.
> At the same time, Yale
> graduate students were holding meetings to discuss
> the ethics of academic
> and industry licensing agreements. They, too, were
> looking for an example
> to rally around and found it in a Yale Daily News
> article about Zerit and
> the license with Bristol-Myers.
>
> By March 9, about 600 Yale students, faculty and
> researchers signed a
> petition demanding that Yale push Bristol-Myers to
> make the drug
> affordable. On March 15, Bristol-Myers Squibb became
> the first drug company
> to announce it would relinquish patent rights for an
> AIDS drug in South
> Africa. A spokesman says the company was in talks
> with Yale before the
> protests began and the students played no role.
>
> Nevertheless, students and global AIDS activists are
> taking credit. Now
> they say they won't let up until they see evidence
> that Bristol-Myers
> actually does what it has said it would do. Last
> week, more than 200
> students showed up for a teach-in on the New Haven
> campus.
>
> In Minnesota, Ms. Swarr, spurred by the Yale
> protest, decided to take on
> her own administration. After seeing a March 12
> article in the university's
> daily newspaper that mentioned the Ziagen patent,
> she contacted Zachie
> Achmat, a South African activist she knew. He put
> her in contact with the
> activists at Yale, who were then in the middle of
> their petition drive.
>
> Within a week, Ms. Swarr says, the students at
> Minnesota were in contact
> "with almost every major international
> nongovernmental organization working
> on issues of affordable HIV/AIDS treatment." Oxfam,
> an activist group based
> in the United Kingdom, weighed in with a March 28
> letter to the
> university's president, Mark Yudof, asking that the
> school hand over its
> Ziagen patent to a public entity such as the World
> Health Organization and
> contribute a portion of past royalties to the WHO as
> well. The university
> hasn't responded to the letter.
>
>
>
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