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June 30, 1999, Wednesday

SECTION: OPINION Pg. B-8:1,7,8; B-10:2,3

LENGTH: 927 words

HEADLINE: Al Gore's pharmacological concerns

BYLINE: Arianna Huffington

BODY:

Campaign 2000 has already spawned its first protests, with demonstrators following Vice President Al Gore from Tennessee to New Hampshire to New York to Philadelphia. There is no catchy character -- like 1992's "Chicken George" or 1996's "Buttman" -- but the protesters issue provides an excellent object lesson about the rotten core of American politics: how our campaign finance system allows powerful special interests to secretly dictate policy -- even when the life or death of millions is at stake.

The protesters are outraged that Gore, in his role as co-chair of the U.S.- South African Binational Commission, has, according to a recent State Department report to Congress, spearheaded "an assiduous, concerted campaign" to stop South Africa from making low-cost AIDS drugs available to its 3.2 million infected citizens.

Allowing South Africa to license domestic production of the lifesaving drugs, known as "compulsory licensing," is one of those rare issues -- such as child abuse and drunk driving -- on which there cannot possibly be two sides. After all, the country is suffering from an AIDS epidemic that our own surgeon general has compared "to the plague that decimated the population of Europe in the 14th century."

Although sub-Saharan African nations account for 70 percent of the world's new HIV cases and 90 percent of all AIDS deaths, less than 1 percent of AIDS drugs are sold there. Who would defend leaving hundreds of thousands to die because lifesaving medicines are priced out of their reach? Certainly not the same people who have spared no expense in the last few months waging a humanitarian war.

Or so one would think. But Gore, wedded to a trade policy that is anything but humanitarian, thinks otherwise and has aligned himself with the pharmaceutical companies that are suing the government of South Africa. They claim that its 1997 Medicines Act violates World Trade Organization regulations by allowing for the compulsory licensing and parallel importing -- i.e., shopping for the best price -- of AIDS drugs. But it does not. In fact, WTO rules are particularly liberal when it comes to national emergencies such as epidemics.

In explanation, the vice president's office served up a bureaucratic cocktail of words -- to be taken only with an empty head. "In August 1998," his spokesman told me, "the vice president met with Thabo Mbeki (now South Africa's president) and proposed trying to clarify Section 15(c) of South Africa's Medicines Act by working toward a resolution within a framework that included parallel importing and compulsory licensing in line with international agreements." I don't know how many South Africans died of AIDS while you were reading that sentence, but many have perished while the vice president has been figuring out the controlling legal authority over AIDS drugs. It looks like Gore's "livability agenda" stops at the suburbs' edge.

The reasons why Gore tried to get Mbeki to acquiesce to the drug companies are chillingly laid out in next month's American Prospect magazine. John B. Judis exposes "K Street Gore's interlocking directorate" of aides, friends, advisers and lobbyists moving seamlessly between the pharmaceutical industry and his inner circle. Among them are Anthony Podesta, a top adviser and close friend of Gore and one of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America's chief lobbyists; Gore's chief domestic policy adviser David Beier, who was previously the top in-house lobbyist for Genentech; and Peter Knight, Gore's main fund-raiser, who made $120,000 lobbying for Schering- Plough. (According to Public Campaign, Gore has helped raise at least $1.4 million from drug companies over the course of his career.)

It is no wonder that the African Growth and Opportunity Act, sponsored by Rep. Phil Crane, R-Ill., with the full backing of the president and the vice president, does not even mention the AIDS crisis. Fortunately, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., has introduced a competing bill that would prevent the United States from applying sanctions on South Africa and other sub-Saharan nations that are attempting to make AIDS drugs widely available. "American drug companies want some of the poorest people in the world to pay U.S. market prices for drugs," Jackson told me. "But AIDS drugs can cost $500 per week -- which happens to be the annual per capita income of sub-Saharan Africa."

One indication that the Jackson bill is gaining steam is the fact that Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio, who originally co-sponsored both bills, has now decided to support Jackson's. "It is the better bill," he told me. "The White House called me and asked me to support Crane's, but it puts trade above all other humanitarian concerns."

The vice president's office says it is trying "to help AIDS patients by making sure drug companies maintain profit levels to develop new AIDS medications."

But what good are AIDS medications if they can't get to the people with AIDS?

And someone should remind the vice president that last year alone the three major AIDS-drug manufacturers -- Glaxo Wellcome, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer -- made respectively $4.43 billion, $3.64 billion and $3.35 billion.

Up to now money has talked louder than the muffled cries of millions of African AIDS victims. But the chants of the protesters on the campaign trail are amplifying their cries. Will they also lead to a change in policy from pharmacologic Al?

HUFFINGTON can be reached via e-mail at arianna@ariannaonline.com

LOAD-DATE: July 16, 1999

Document 36 of 40.


Search Terms: compulsory licensing, AIDS, Africa
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