[Nettime-bold] Pharmaceuticals move to limit cheaper drugs

["Gustavo Barbosa" <gustavo.listas@iname.com>]

>quote<

Pharmaceuticals move to limit cheaper drugs
Irish Times - April 20 - By Sarah Boseley

(...)
Brazil is richer than South Africa and has half-a-million fewer
HIV-positive patients, but that does not diminish its
achievement in distributing life-saving antiretroviral drugs to the
vast majority of patients who need them.

Brazil has achieved success by making cheap generic copies of
some drugs available in the West and buying others from
generic manufacturers in India. Since 1996, when it began to
provide free anti-retroviral drugs, Brazil has halved the death
rate through AIDS and cut the number of those confined to
hospital by 80 per cent.

But now Brazil is coming under serious attack. Washington, at
the behest of the pharmaceutical companies, is taking Brazil to
a disciplinary tribunal of the World Trade Organisation. The
US alleges that Brazil is in breach of the world body's Trade
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
agreement which enshrines patent protection for 20 years. If
the WTO rules against Brazil, it will be forced to change its
laws and weaken its ability to obtain cheap medicines, or face
trade sanctions.

"We are very concerned about the Brazilian case," says
Michael Bailey, senior policy adviser at Oxfam which is
campaigning for access to cheap medicines. "It is also a litmus
test for the US government's intentions."

(...)
"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," says
Mr Bailey. "For most developing countries it is pretty tough to
fight a WTO case." Developing nations are scheduled to sign
up to TRIPS by 2005. After that, poorer countries fear that the
drug companies and their lawyers will be able to set high prices
virtually unchallenged.

(...)
Despite the publicity disaster wrought by the court case in
Pretoria, the US will be reluctant to back down over its WTO
litigation. Brazil, after all, is in its back yard and the nightmare
scenario for the pharmaceutical giants is the possibility of cheap
generic versions of their latest drugs ending up in the United
States.

more on:
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2001/0420/opt2.htm

****

What is the WTO?
http://www.wto.org/
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international
organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart
are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s
trading nations and ratified in their parliaments.

I recommend you to have a serious look at the WTO, even if you're not from
Brazil or any other "under development" country.  All their decisions will
sure affect you and unless you are part of their priorities, the effect will
not be good.  In case you are not sure if you are part of their priorities,
please have a look at: http://www.el-comandante.com/capitalism.htm

Should you feel your priorities do not match their plans, keep an eye on
their moves:
http://www.davos2001.ch/eye.htm

Need a more human-orientated model?  Check out:

World Social Forum (WSF)
www.forumsocialmundial.org.br
The World Social Forum will be a new international arena for the creation
and exchange of social and economic projects that promote human rights,
social justice and sustainable development. It will take place every year in
the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the same period as the World
Economic Forum, which happens in Davos, Switzerland, at the end of January.
Since 1971, The World Economic Forum has played a key role in formulating
economic policies throughout the world. It`s sponsored by a Swiss
organization that serves as a consultant to the United Nations and is
financed by more than one thousand corporations. Example of proposal:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/intarch/xcities.html

>unquote<






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