For Immediate Release Contact: Jim Farrell or Andy McDonald
May 10, 2000
(202)
224-8440
E-mail:
andy_mcdonald@wellstone.senate.gov
Senator Calls Industry's Behavior "Egregious"
(Washington, D.C.) – Taking the nation's profiteering drug
companies strongly to task, Senator Paul Wellstone blasted today the elimination
of a Democratic proposal to make AIDS drugs more accessible and affordable to
African countries currently suffering from the disease in epidemic proportions.
The proposal, by Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Russ Feingold (D-WI), would
prohibit funds allocated to U.S. agencies from being used to seek revisions in
efforts by African countries to increase their citizens' access to AIDS drugs.
Although accepted by the bipartisan Senate managers of the African Growth and
Opportunity Act and Enhanced Caribbean Initiative, Sens. Pat Moynihan (D-NY) and
William Roth (R-DE), the Feinstein-Feingold amendment was struck by Republican
House and Senate Conferees on the bill (H.R. 454.)
Wellstone's comments came during floor debate in the Senate
on the bill, which expands trade to countries in Africa and the
Caribbean.
"With 13 million African lives lost from AIDS and 23
million Africans currently infected with this horrible disease, this modest
proposal should be acceptable to every human being, because it's the right thing
to do," said Wellstone. "Yet the arm twisting by the pharmaceutical industry and
their friends in Congress of African countries trying to help their people who
are suffering continues. Making such profits off the misery, sickness, and death
of such people is obscene, and if ordinary Minnesotans and Americans knew about
it, they would be outraged. Does this Congress belong to the pharmaceutical
companies, or the American people? What's happening in Africa is devastation,
and we must take action to help these countries, not squeeze them for profits.
Otherwise, more people will suffer and more will die."
In some African countries, life expectancy has dropped by 15 years due to the AIDS epidemic. Worldwide, 15,000 new young people each day are infected with AIDS. Wellstone cited a April 17, 2000 Fortune magazine report which found that pharmaceutical companies the highest average profit margin of any U.S. industry at 18.6 percent. Pressure from Wellstone and his Democratic colleagues, who had earlier blasted the administration for joining the pharmaceutical industry in the arm-twisting tactics on African countries, resulted today in an executive order by the President implementing the proposed amendment. However, with the administration set to end in eight months, such action will have little effect unless upheld by the next, yet-to-be determined administration.