IDEALS

BALI, (Aug. 12, 2009) IPS/GIN – Pharmaceutical firms have developed
drugs that have lengthened lives and cut death rates from HIV and
AIDS, but their financial clout in no way overrides their social
responsibility in fighting the pandemic, a key advocate argued at
an Asian conference on AIDS Wednesday.

At the 9th International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific
(ICAAP), Javed Jabbar, a former senator and minister from Pakistan,
called on governments and communities to remind drug firms of the
fundamental difference between owning patents on goods – such as
designer items or mobile phones – and life-saving HIV drugs.

“These are medicines that make for life and death,” argued Jabbar,
also global vice president for the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature. By applying the patent system to the drug
product and the process, “we create inherently unjust monopolies
and block knowledge transfer” that could save so many lives around
the world.

It is time to rewrite the rules of intellectual property rights,
a pillar of the world trade system, critics like Jabbar argue. “In
the context of HIV and AIDS, we need a new concept of people’s
property rights instead of intellectual property rights.”

Toward the end of his remarks, activists pushing for the removal
of drug patents trooped in front of the hall and unfurled banners
that said ‘no patents on AIDS drugs.’ Lambasting several drug
companies for refusing to let generic versions of HIV drugs be
made, they chanted, ‘Shame on you!’

Jabbar expressed support for a proposal by economist Joseph
Stiglitz to recognise people’s property rights. He suggests setting
up a fund to pay fees to scientists who come up with cures for key
diseases – after which the drugs would go into the public domain
instead of being ‘owned’ by pharmaceutical companies.

In an interview, Jabbar said that the idea of people’s property
rights would include giving drug companies payments to continue
producing needed medication.

Echoing criticism by many activists here at ICAAP, he cited studies
saying that only 15 percent of the cost of drugs actually goes to
their development, the rest goes to marketing. Quoting from
academic studies, he said that patent protection pushes up drug
prices by an average of 400 percent and often exceeds 1,000
percent.

“They can make money but they don’t have to make 400 percent
profit,” said Jabbar. “It’s greed, it’s shameful.”

At the same time, Jabbar says there are signs that the “concept of
the people’s will” is gradually making some headway in putting some
pressure on drug firms.

In July, the drug firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) granted a free
voluntary licensing agreement to a South African company to produce
abacavir, a second-line anti-retroviral drug, on a generic basis.
Earlier this year, it put several of its patents on tropical
diseases into a free pool – but excluded drugs for HIV and AIDS.

Then, there are the examples such as Brazil, India and Thailand
taking key roles in producing more affordable treatment for HIV.

“These [drug] corporations are being forced to acknowledge that
there is public demand, that there is hostility,” he said.

Ironically, Jabbar observed, it is the “great gains” in science
and medical health – including HIV/AIDS in the past – that have
given drug companies such strong clout in virtually shaping public
health policies for the world.

While World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules allow room for breaking
patents and resorting to compulsory licensing for public health
needs, including HIV and AIDS, many health advocates say that these
are far from enough today.

The world trade regime has also put in place a system where
corporate intellectual property rights – especially those of
pharmaceutical firms – are “strongly enforced” at the expense of
the public good, Jabbar maintained.

Those breaking patents or making generic formulations of drugs
attract strong action from companies – much more than when copies
are made of movies or books – even if the public health interest
in the case of medicines is crystal clear, Jabbar added.

While the idea of people’s property rights is not something drug
firms will embrace, “it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t campaign for
it.”

“Today’s fantasies become tomorrow’s facts,” Jabbar stressed.

To drive home the seriousness of the pandemic nearly three decades
after the first HIV cases were reported and despite huge medical
leaps made in the last decade, Jabbar used the analogy of a ’sexy’
development term these days: climate change.

“What climate change means for our planet’s survival, HIV/AIDS
means for human health,” he said.

*TerraViva at ICAAP 09 (http://www.ipsterraviva.asia)