U.S. Drug Imperialism
excerpted from the book
Corporate Predators
by Russel Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Common Courage Press, 1999
"We don't work for" consumers in Argentina or Africa,
and we "don't care" about public health issues there.
That was how the deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative
for intellectual property responded almost two years ago to a
suggestion that the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) should approach
other countries' pharmaceutical patent policies as a public health
issue rather than as a trade issue.
This cruel and callous comment remains official U.S. policy,
which subordinates the health interests of people all over the
globe to the narrow demands of U.S. pharmaceutical companies.
Last month, Clinton administration officials went into diplomatic
overdrive to subvert an effort at the World Health Organization
(WHO) to establish the common-sense principle that people should
matter more than profits when it comes to access to essential
drugs.
WHO's governing body, the World Health Assembly, had before
it a proposal to urge countries to "ensure that public health
interests rather than commercial interests have 'primacy' in pharmaceutical
and health policies."
With most of the world ready to adopt this principle, the
United States balked. Acting at the behest of the Pharmaceutical
Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), it suggested instead
that "public health and commercial interests [be] handled
in a compatible manner"-a banal and effectively meaningless
notion.
When the world moved toward a compromise that would have preserved
the critical principle that public health concerns should take
priority over mercantile interests, the U.S. representatives successfully
engaged in underhanded parliamentary maneuvers to have the whole
issue deferred indefinitely.
The World Health Assembly conflict is the latest episode in
the U.S. government's reprobate crusade to force other countries
to adopt straitjacketing intellectual property rules for the benefit
of Bristol Myers Squib, Eli Lilly, Merck, Johnson & Johnson
and the other drug kingpins.
Strict patent rules provide extended legalized monopolies
for drug companies. Drug companies say they need long monopoly
periods to recoup their research and development costs. But no
one genuinely disputes that monopolies raise costs to consumers
and that generic competition lowers prices.
Many developing countries have pursued flexible policies designed
to satisfy consumer needs for affordable drugs and to foster the
creation of domestic manufacturers. So too did virtually every
industrialized country at some point in their development-many
European countries only began recognizing drug patents in the
1970s.
Among the diverse pro-health patent policies which countries
have maintained in recent years: compulsory licensing, which requires
patent holders to license their products (typically at a profit)
to competitors; shorter patent terms than the 20 years now required
in international trade agreements; respect for patents on processes,
but not products (meaning competitors can imitate a product if
they can figure out a different way to make it); and parallel
imports-allowing distributors to buy a patented product in one
country and sell it in another, to prevent patent holders from
charging extra-high prices in some countries.
Countries with less strict pharmaceutical patent policies,
which until recently included Canada as well as Argentina, Brazil
and India, tend to have better developed domestic industries and
cheaper prices-often dramatically cheaper prices. India, which
had virtually no domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers prior to
1970, saw a thriving industry evolve after adopting a more flexible
patent policy that enabled domestic companies to compete with
the multinationals.
In the last decade, however, the United States has successfully
battled for the inclusion of strict intellectual property rules
in international trade agreements such as NAFTA and the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Often, the U.S. position
has literally been drafted by PhRMA.
Those trade agreements disregard public health considerations
and have forced dramatic changes in intellectual property rules
the world over.
Still, PhRMA is not satisfied. And when PhRMA is not happy,
USTR is not happy.
In recent years, USTR has imposed trade sanctions or held
out the threat of trade sanctions against numerous countries that
have adopted public health measures which are permitted under
relevant trade agreements. In many cases, USTR has complained
vociferously about countries maintaining public health policies
similar or identical to U.S. law. Argentina, South Africa, Brazil,
Cyprus, Israel and many others have all felt the sting of USTR
threats or sanctions.
It is time to put an end to the U.S. drug imperialism. People's
lives are at stake in the pharmaceutical policy decisions that
the U.S. government insists on classifying as exclusively trade
related.
The United States could begin to break with its unhealthy
past by agreeing to the modest principle that, at least when it
comes to drug policies, public health should count more than the
commercial concerns of the pharmaceutical industry.
Corporate Predators