DOHA, Qatar-Asked Monday
if American pharmaceutical companies were
participating in the debate over proposed
language on Trade Aspects of Intellectual
Property rights (TRIPS), a ranking American
diplomat said, "we try to keep the
pharmaceutical industry informed of what
we do, as we do for all interested industries
and other groups."
And
it is in the pharmaceutical area that some of the most
heated debates occur, usually surrounding the patent
rights held by American and Swiss companies for drugs
used internationally. Language under study in Doha
this week could put "public health" ahead
of intellectual property rights.
"We understand the right to clarify certain
rules, but people are really hitting below the
waterline," said Brian P. Ager, Director General
of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries
and Associations. "The whole thing is a rules
based system, with this language you get nothing;
no rules, a blank slate. That's not clarifying,
that's obscuring. There has been no balance. There's
a group of countries who are pretty negative to
intellectual property rights including Brazil,
India and Africa."
All three of these countries have gone head to
head with the pharmaceutical companies before.
Brazil had a WTO case brought against it concerning
its patent and local working requirement laws.
Brazil agreed to phase out the local working requirement
law as did all the other mostly Latin and South
American countries that had similar legislation
on their books.
The law said that a foreign producer had the right
to export to Brazil a new product for up to three
years. If at the end of three years that product
was not being produced in Brazil, Brazil then had
the right to give local production to a local manufacturer,
effectively commandeering the product. It was originally
designed to induce businesses into building factories
in Brazil.
On the other hand, "Fifty percent of HIV/AIDS
mortality rates have been reduced due to such domestic
policy measures," said Jagjit Plahe, Policy
and Campaigners Officer of World Vision, an international
nongovernmental organization (NGO).
The dispute brought against the Brazilians two
years ago had nothing to do with AIDS drugs, but
actually a patent involving a vacuum that sucked
the air out of grain silos.
"Brazil had a very clever Minister of Health," said
Shannon S. S. Herzfeld, Senior Vice President International
Affairs of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers
of America.
"Brazil hadn't illegally produced AIDS drugs,
so the case was misleading," she said. "The
US would have won the case, but they didn't want
to go through another 18 months of pain with Brazil
screaming AIDS drugs, so they withdrew the WTO
case and entered into bilateral talks."
India, the largest producer of counterfeit drugs
in the world, with 23,000 generic companies working
in the largest country without patent laws in the
world, will, as a signatory to TRIPS, have to create
patent laws no later then 2005. But those laws,
like all WTO laws, would be only forward looking,
and not affect currently disputed sales.
"India is copying HIV medications but they're
not being sold to anybody but the rich," said
Harvey Bale, International Federation of Pharmaceuticals
Manufacturers and Associations. "They're not
altruists, they're out to make money."
The US government
has claimed that the proposed language would
allow India to declare a heath crisis
in just about anything and be able to compulsory
license any drug it wanted. To void this the pharmaceutical
companies are pushing to include a reference to
AIDS in the paragraph, rather then just the term "health
crisis."
"What developing countries are saying is
that it doesn't have to be limited to AIDS. Malaria,
and tuberculosis are also serious problems in many
countries," said Jim Redden, an Australian
delegate. "There should be a right to public
health as a key guarantee for any nation state," he
said. "Developing countries only comprise
20 percent of the total global market for drugs
and medicines," Redden said.
Most of research
and development is focused on diseases that are
prevalent in the developed world,
said Plahe. "Therefore the argument that option
one within the TRIPS declaration will drastically
affect the profits of pharmaceutical companies
is false. They do not spend much money on diseases
prevalent in the third world in any case."
"That is the risk," said Herzfeld. "We
don't want to say that we are walking away but
there's a hesitancy and a clear decline, versus
a healthy growth of research in other anti-viral
research. There is definitely a hesitancy being
felt now in the industry."
|
