Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
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August 23, 1999, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 14; Column
1; Editorial Desk
LENGTH: 708 words
HEADLINE: Drugs for AIDS in
Africa
BODY:
The average African
nation spends less than $10 per person each year on health care. The mix of
drugs, including the new protease inhibitors, necessary to turn
AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic disease costs at
least $12,000 per person each year. That disparity virtually guarantees that
most of the 22 million Africans infected with the AIDS virus
will not get the best available treatment. Few will even be able to afford less
expensive life-prolonging drugs such as AZT or ddI or -- far cheaper and just as
crucial -- medicines to fight the infections that accompany
AIDS.
Washington is now arguing with South
Africa about a new law in that country that could allow South
Africa to make cheap versions of still-patented drugs or import
them at less than the manufacturers want to charge. The debate is important, and
it has revealed the need to broaden the Administration's policy, which has been
dominated by trade issues and the desire to protect American pharmaceutical
patents. Washington should stop pressuring South Africa to
change the law, but even then far more will need to be done to get lifesaving
medicines to poor Africans with AIDS.
Part of the
challenge is to increase the avail- ability of already affordable drugs. Last
month, the Administration announced a $100 million effort to fight
AIDS in Africa. It will buy and help countries
use some cheap treatments, like medicines for tuberculosis and other
AIDS-related infections and drugs to prevent mother-child
transmission.
While some pharmaceutical manufacturers, most recently
Bristol-Myers Squibb, are making substantial donations to fight
AIDS in poor countries, they want to see governments or health
organizations bear the cost of AIDS drugs. But most of the
newer ones are far too expensive. Many third-world countries have long responded
to the high cost of patented drugs by copying them, sometimes for a tenth of the
patented price. The pharmaceutical industry argues that this pirating
discourages the search for new medicines, as patented drugs are priced high in
part to allow manufacturers to recover the research and development costs of all
their projects, even the unsuccessful ones.
The drug companies, and the
Clinton Administration's trade negotiators, have fought the efforts of
third-world countries to manufacture or import cheap versions of still-patented
drugs. American trade pressure on Thailand throughout the 1990's, for example,
caused the country to put restrictions on its manufacture of cheap patented
drugs and ban their import, which AIDS doctors say reduced the
country's ability to fight the disease.
What really worry the drug
industry today, however, are the new intellectual property
rules of the World Trade Organization. Over Washington's objections, poor
nations won the right to make patented drugs in certain situations, especially
when there is a "national emergency." While Washington says it objects to
technicalities in the new South African law, the larger reason trade officials
have pressed so hard is that the industry fears South Africa
could set precedents, within the world's trade rules, for the manufacture of
cheap drugs. Drug makers have sued in South African courts to block the law.
While defending intellectual property is important, the
narrowness of the Administration's views is dismaying. Pharmaceutical companies
would lose little if they found legal and controllable ways to let poor
countries -- which offer scant market anyway -- reproduce drugs or buy them
cheaply.
In addition, some of the most important AIDS
drugs were discovered in the National Institutes of Health, or with Government
grants. Two examples are ddI and the protease inhibitor Norvir. That financing
may well give Washington the right to allow the World Health Organization to
license the drugs' manufacture, for sale only in poor nations in case of
emergency. The Administration should explore this option for all such vital
medicines developed at taxpayer expense. The desires of America's pharmaceutical
companies have been the overwhelming force driving American policy on the issue
of drugs in poor nations. Surely the needs of 35 million people infected with
H.I.V. worldwide should count for more.
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LOAD-DATE: August 23, 1999 
