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September 25, 1999

SECTION: LOBBYING & LAW; Pg. 2738; Vol. 31, No. 39

LENGTH: 1626 words

HEADLINE: A Gadfly for the New Millennium

BYLINE: Shawn Zeller

BODY:

Even by consumer activist Jamie Love's exacting
standards, July 22 was a productive day. Twice in eight hours, he
trekked to Capitol Hill and challenged the titans of the
technology and drug industries. First, Love warned the members of
a House Commerce subcommittee about the growing power of the
Internet's governing body--ICANN, the industry-backed Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Testifying in the
afternoon before a different House panel, he denounced the
Clinton Administration and the U.S. pharmaceutical industry for
opposing South Africa's efforts to obtain low-cost AIDS drugs.

Love has helped turn a complicated trade and patent issue
into a political firestorm that has galvanized both AIDS and
public health groups and embarrassed Vice President Al Gore. And
Love and his allies have achieved victory. On Sept. 17, the
Clinton Administration and South Africa reached an agreement that
would allow the South African government to significantly cut the
price of AIDS drugs.

The drug-patent battle is just Love's latest clash with
the corporate powers. Love, the director of the Consumer Project
on Technology, a Washington advocacy group started by Ralph
Nader, has emerged as a leading critic of corporate domination of
high technology. He has bashed virtually every telecommunications
and Internet merger, attacked computer companies for selling
shoddy software, and sponsored conferences that expounded on
Microsoft Corp.'s ''evil empire.''

''He's shaping the agenda and forcing people to pay
attention,'' Nader raves. More important, Nader emphasizes, Love
is taking the consumer movement into the next century. Nader made
his name critiquing the safety of the automobile, that symbol of
the Industrial Age. Love specializes in such cutting-edge issues
as intellectual property and the Internet. ''It's a huge field,
where very little (consumer) work's been done,'' Nader said.

At 50, Love is older than the typical 20-something Nader
raider. He has worked with Nader for nine years and become one of
the consumer legend's most trusted lieutenants. The two activists
have known each other since the 1970s, recalled Nader, when a
colleague who was writing a book on Alaska described a kid fresh
out of high school who was ''writing some of the most
sophisticated economic analyses about offshore oil activities''
that he had ever read. Love headed the Alaska Public Interest
Research Group, which Nader partly funded.

His interest in consumer action, Love said, stems from
growing up during the Sixties, an era of Kennedy optimism
followed by years of turbulence and protest. ''Ultimately, you
have to believe there is some social injustice which has to be
fixed, some wrong that has to be righted, and that your work is
having some concrete effect on people's lives,'' Love said.

In 1980, Love earned a spot in a mid-career master's
degree program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of
Government, even though he did not have a college degree. Five
years later, he collected a second master's degree, this time
from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs. After teaching stints at Princeton and
Rutgers University, Love took a job as a senior economist at the
Frank Russell Co., a pension fund consulting firm based in
Tacoma, Wash. In 1990, he joined Nader as the director of the
Taxpayer Assets Project, which worked to expand public access to
government information. As his focus broadened, Love in 1994
changed the group's name to the Consumer Project on Technology.

Among his fellow liberal activists, Love has gained a
reputation as smart and tenacious. Given Washington's focus on
technology policy, Love's work has suddenly become high-profile.
''If you look over the last five years, you'd be hard-pressed to
find a group that has been involved in as many information policy
issues as we have or that has been involved earlier on the big
issues,'' he says.

Love's clash with the pharmaceutical industry and the
Administration over AIDS drugs is typical of the consumer
activist's approach. ''It's hard for the average person to see
the connection between what a government policy is on patents and
how it would affect people,'' Love admits. Still, Love has
adroitly managed to turn the issue into a network news story.

For example, this summer, AIDS activists, relying on
Love's research, garnered publicity for their cause by disrupting
Gore's campaign appearances with the chant ''Gore's greed
kills.'' The protesters accused Gore, who is seeking the
Democratic presidential nomination, of pandering to drug
companies by leading U.S. efforts to block South Africa from
manufacturing or purchasing inexpensive AIDS drugs.

In 1997, South Africa passed legislation that legalized
parallel importing and compulsory licensing. Parallel importing
would allow South Africa to buy AIDS drugs at lower prices from
sources other than the U.S. manufacturers. Compulsory licensing
would permit South African companies to manufacture generic
versions of AIDS drugs after paying a licensing fee to American
drugmakers.

According to Love, parallel importing and compulsory
licensing, both permitted under international law, would reduce
the price of AIDS drugs in Africa by as much as 95 percent.
American drug companies have attacked the South African law in a
variety of venues and encouraged Administration trade officials
to oppose it. The companies maintain that the profits from AIDS
drugs are needed to pay for research and development of future
miracle drugs. The Sept. 17 agreement allows South Africa to move
ahead with its plan for compulsory licensing and parallel
imports.

Shannon S.S. Herzfeld, senior vice president for
international affairs at the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America, says Love has ''done an injustice to
the dialogue'' about alleviating the AIDS crisis, by
oversimplifying the health challenges facing Africa. Lowering
drug prices isn't the only consideration, she adds. Unless basic
health care also improves, South Africans could be susceptible to
new strains of HIV, Herzfeld explained.

Nor is Love popular with many Administration officials.
''We've found his assertions to be considerable exaggerations of
the truth,'' said an Administration official who works on trade
matters. ''And the idea that Gore has been directing us to take a
hard line with South Africa is total garbage.''

The Vice President has likewise denied being influenced
by the drug lobby, but he has engaged in some damage control on
the issue. This summer, Gore proposed an infusion of an extra $100 million in AIDS-prevention assistance for Africa. He also
oversaw the Sept. 17 accord with South Africa.

The Love-inspired protests resulted in ''one of the
most--if not the most--successful progressive campaigns this
year,'' said Beth Daley of the Project on Government Oversight, a
liberal group that has worked with Love on pharmaceutical issues.

Love's efforts have proved less successful on Capitol
Hill. He has helped Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., for example, on
a bill that would require lower prices for drugs developed with
the help of the National Institutes of Health, and on a proposal
that would permit parallel importing of drugs in the United
States. Neither, however, is expected to pass.

International patent policy is just one of Love's
specialties. He has joined other consumer advocates in opposing
the recent spate of telecommunications mergers and the cable
industry's efforts to control access to the Internet. Love has
also challenged software companies that refuse to reimburse
customers who bought defective software.

ICANN, which the Commerce Department established in late
1998 to oversee some aspects of the Internet, is another target.
''We are opposed to ICANN's current proposal to take control of
key Internet resources without any clear understanding of the
limits of ICANN's powers and without any ongoing oversight by
government bodies,'' Love told the House Commerce Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee on July 22.

Congress should rein in ICANN and force the group to
include more consumers and fewer business interests among its
members, he added.

Love's skills have won the respect of some opponents.
Jonathan Zuck, the president of the Association for Competitive
Technology, a trade group for high-tech companies, has often
debated Love over the Microsoft antitrust case. Love contends
that Microsoft's monopoly over computer operating systems should
be regulated. Zuck counters that government intervention in the
computer and software markets will stifle innovation. Despite
their differences, Zuck says he has a ''good working
relationship'' with Love.

But for all of Love's tenacity and public relations
talents, his track record is spotty. Even Capitol Hill aides who
share his positions on issues acknowledge that Love disdains
compromise. ''He's not the most pragmatic activist out there,''
conceded a Republican aide. Moreover, most of Love's patrons are
liberal Democrats, the staffer added, so most of his proposals go
nowhere in the Republican-majority Congress.

''To be an activist, you can't have a thin skin,'' Love
said. ''We have our issues, we stick to them, win or lose.''

LOAD-DATE: September 28, 1999

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