Doctors Say Pact Threatens AIDS Progress (Trade Ag stops cheap drugs)

[papau]

Bush uses trade agreements to help drug companies and screw those with AIDS.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-aids13jul13.story

Doctors Say Pact Threatens AIDS Progress

A charity group urges Thailand to reject a U.S. trade deal that could end an affordable-drugs program, which is seen as a model for Asia.

By Thomas H. Maugh II Times Staff Writer July 13, 2004

BANGKOK, Thailand — A potential trade agreement between Thailand and the United States could derail this country's production of inexpensive AIDS drugs and imperil the future of an anti-HIV program that is widely considered a model for countries throughout Asia, the group Doctors Without Borders said Monday.

"If the Thais sign such an agreement, they will have to close down their generic drug production," Paul Cawthorne of the Belgium-based group told a news conference. "Trade rules are the biggest threat" to the fight against AIDS, he said.

Thailand is one of the few countries — others include India and Brazil — that manufacture generic versions of anti-HIV drugs developed by U.S. manufacturers.

The country began researching manufacturing techniques for the drugs in the early 1990s and was preparing to market a generic version of the drug didanosine when Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., the drug's manufacturer, served notice that it held a valid patent on the drug. The Thai government was ready to accede, but Doctors Without Borders urged it to fight the claim.

The following year, Thailand's Central Intellectual Property Court ruled the patent invalid in Thailand, paving the way for the country to begin large-scale drug production.

That decision was, in effect, reinforced last September when the World Trade Organization agreed that poor nations could ignore patents in times of national health crises. <snip>

[Trillo]

1. Division by National Border?

What seems to be missing in the various actions to raise drug prices in America, thereby lowering them in countries considered "poor," is the stark delineation that division by country is not the best way to determine poor individuals from more affluent ones. This article points out the respective patent agencies in other countries, but that is an agency of the establishment in that country, which also includes their currency. Indeed, patent laws are generally designed to allow patent holders the right to profit without competition for a time, pointing right back to the money issue.

Do wealthy countries have poor people? Do poor countries have wealthy people?

If there's to be charity for those less fortunate, whether it be of low-cost pharmaceutical or other need, why should the division be one of national border, instead of individual need?