"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

USA For Africa

by Lee

When the US doesn’t do enough to combat African AIDS it’s evil.  Then, when it donates billions of dollars to fight African AIDS, it’s still evil.

As South Africa starts rolling out the world’s biggest HIV and Aids treatment programme, an unexpected stumbling block is hindering attempts to provide medication to the estimated four million sufferers in sub-Saharan Africa.

An attempt by the Bush administration to make its $15-billion (about R105-billion) Aids treatment grants conditional to brand-name medicines has aid workers and activists, as well as South Africa’s pharmaceutical industry, up in arms.

And what are the specifics of the plan?

George Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) is headed by Randall Tobias, a former chief executive of drug giant Eli Lilly. Tobias visited South Africa recently as part of a tour of Africa.

Activists are concerned about so-called guidelines and comments by Tobias that suggest that the generic drugs judged most suitable for Africa are not acceptable to the United States and that its taxpayers should not be made to pay for “substandard” medicines. ...

Medicines sans Frontieres (MSF), the aid organisation that set up the first pilot site for ARVs in South Africa in 2002, started administering a generic drug at the Lusikisiki site this year and was hoping to expand its use.

The drug is a three-in-one pill that combines drugs from three brand names, called a fixed-dose combination, and is made by Indian generic companies.

MSF’s Khayelitsha pharmacist, Marta Darder, said the two-a-day pill had immense clinical advantages as it simplified treatment, therefore boosting adherence, and reduced the development of resistance - the exact opposite of Tobias’s claims.

It is also much cheaper than both the brand-name drugs and their generic equivalents, despite the fact that prices have dropped dramatically over the past two years.

The drugs will soon cost as little as $140 a year per patient, compared with the cheapest alternative at $562, which makes it affordable for developing countries in the long run.

So there are a number of advantages to going with the Indian generic, both clinical and cost-wise.  However, what neither the article nor the “activists” will tell you is that these Indian drug companies violated US patents, with full UN and international approval.  These drug companies are the ones who invested the tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars in development capital to create these drugs, and they are entitled to a return on that investment.  The Indian drug companies merely stole the work of American drug companies and synthesized them into a single generic.  It cost them virtually nothing. 

So, American policy essentially breaks down like this:  American tax dollars are not going to be used to finance the theft of intellectual property from American pharmaceutical companies.  Unfortunately Randall Tobias is trying to sugarcoat this by claiming that the Indian drugs are of lower quality, thereby justifying the higher expense of the American drugs.  This is ridiculous, and gives the “activists” an opportunity to provide a legitimate rebuttal to his argument.  What is much harder to rebut is the position I put forth here, that the Indian drug companies stole intellectual property from US drug companies, and that US tax dollars are not going to be used to facilitate that theft.

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