E-DRUG: U.S. Drug Imperialism

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

E-drug: U.S. Drug Imperialism
-----------------------------

Below is a column written by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime
Reporter, and me. If anyone would like to use it in any way, please let me
know (rob@essential.org).

Robert Weissman
---

"We don't work for" consumers in Argentina or Africa, and we "don't care"
about public health issues there.

That was how the deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative for
intellectual property responded almost two years ago to a suggestion that
the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) should approach other countries'
pharmaceutical patent policies as a public health issue rather than as a
trade issue.

This cruel and callous comment remains official U.S. policy, which
subordinates the health interests of people all over the globe to the
narrow demands of U.S. pharmaceutical companies. 

Last month, Clinton administration officials went into diplomatic
overdrive to subvert an effort at the World Health Organization (WHO) to
establish the common-sense principle that people should matter more than
profits when it comes to access to essential drugs.

WHO's governing body, the World Health Assembly, had before it a proposal
to urge countries to "ensure that public-health interests rather than
commercial interests have 'primacy' in pharmaceutical and health
policies."

With most of the world ready to adopt this principle, the United States
balked. Acting at the behest of the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), it suggested instead that "public
health and commercial interests [be] handled in a compatible manner" -- a
banal and effectively meaningless notion.

When the world moved toward a compromise that would have preserved the
critical principle that public health concerns should take priority over
mercantile interests, the U.S. representatives successfully engaged in
underhanded parliamentary maneuvers to have the whole issue deferred
indefinitely.

The World Health Assembly conflict is the latest episode in the U.S.
government's reprobate crusade to force other countries to adopt
straitjacketing intellectual property rules for the benefit of Bristol
Myers Squib, Eli Lilly, Merck, Johnson & Johnson and the other drug
kingpins. 

Strict patent rules provide extended legalized monopolies for drug
companies. Drug companies say they need long monopoly periods to recoup
their research and development costs. But no one genuinely disputes that
monopolies raise costs to consumers and that generic competition lowers
prices. 

Many developing countries have pursued flexible policies designed to
satisfy consumer needs for affordable drugs and to foster the creation of
domestic manufacturers. So too did virtually every industrialized country
at some point in their development -- many European countries only began
recognizing drug patents in the 1970s.

Among the diverse pro-health patent policies which countries have
maintained in recent years: compulsory licensing, which requires patent
holders to license their products (typically at a profit) to competitors;
shorter patent terms than the 20 years now required in international trade
agreements; respect for patents on processes, but not products (meaning
competitors can imitate a product if they can figure out a different way
to make it); and parallel imports -- allowing distributors to buy a
patented product in one country and sell it in another, to prevent patent
holders from charging extra-high prices in some countries.

Countries with less strict pharmaceutical patent policies, which until
recently included Canada as well as Argentina, Brazil and India, tend to
have better developed domestic industries and cheaper prices -- often
dramatically cheaper prices. India, which had virtually no domestic
pharmaceutical manufacturers prior to 1970, saw a thriving industry evolve
after adopting a more flexible patent policy that enabled domestic
companies to compete with the multinationals.

In the last decade, however, the United States has successfully battled
for the inclusion of strict intellectual property rules in international
trade agreements such as NAFTA and the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT). Often, the U.S. position has literally been drafted by
PhRMA.

Those trade agreements disregard public health considerations and have
forced dramatic changes in intellectual property rules the world over. 
Still, PhRMA is not satisfied. And when PhRMA is not happy, USTR is not
happy. 

In recent years, USTR has imposed trade sanctions or held out the threat
of trade sanctions against numerous countries that have adopted public
health measures which are permitted under relevant trade agreements. In
many cases, USTR has complained vociferously about companies maintaining
public health policies similar or identical to U.S. law. Argentina, South
Africa, Brazil, Cyprus, Israel and many others have all felt the sting of
USTR threats or sanctions.

It is time to put an end to the U.S. drug imperialism. People's lives are
at stake in the pharmaceutical policy decisions that the U.S. government
insists on classifying as exclusively trade related. 

The United States could begin to break with its unhealthy past by agreeing
to the modest principle that, at least when it comes to drug policies,
public health should count more than the commercial concerns of the
pharmaceutical industry.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor.

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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[other views on this issue are welcome; WB]

 


 
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