United States: AIDS Activists' Creative Actions Against Gore Highlight his Interference with South African Treatment Access

international gay and lesbian human rights commission

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United States: AIDS Activists' Creative Actions Against Gore Highlight his Interference with South African Treatment Access
06/25/1999

We are forwarding an action alert sponsored by the Health GAP (Global Access Project) Coalition and the Consumer Project on Technology. We are forwarding the email in its entirety in order to cover the background and technical details. Please note that the letter sign-on has a June 30th,1999 deadline.

--Sydney Levy
Research and Advocacy Director
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 23:46:19 -0400
To: Friends
From: Bob Lederer bobl@poz.com
Subject: URGENT - Sign-on letter to VP Gore (6/30 deadline) regarding his obstruction of African access to essential medicines Cc:
Bcc:
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Friends

We are writing to you from the Health GAP (Global Access Project) Coalition, a broad international network of AIDS, health care and consumer advocacy organizations campaigning to dramatically expand HIV/AIDS treatment access both inside the US and worldwide. (Among our active participants is the Treatment Action Campaign of South Africa, itself a broad coalition.) We have been pressuring and meeting with the Clinton/Gore administration for months, seeking to reverse the egregious bullying it has carried out against countries like South Africa and Thailand which are simply seeking to help their citizens survive through reduced prices on medicines. In March, we sent 4 people to a major global conference in Geneva on these issues, where we were educated by representatives from developing nations and forcefully expressed our own positions to the US government and pharmaceutical representatives attending. In April, we mobilized almost 1,000 people to Washington in support of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s HOPE for Africa Act and against the misnamed Africa Growth and Opportunity Act backed by the Administration, the Republicans and major corporations. 21 of our folks were arrested doing civil disobedience at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America office. At that time, over 40 AIDS organizations signed a community consensus letter supporting these two positions, explaining in detail how HOPE would improve access to care and AGOA would further compromise it. None of our efforts have yet moved the Administration to reassess its position - indeed, on April 30, they set a Sept. 30 deadline for deciding on heightened trade sanctions against South Africa.

Now, thanks to the AIDS activists' creative actions against Gore highlighting his interference with South African treatment access, numerous media worldwide are doing stories about this issue, and people from the Health GAP Coalition have been in meetings with Presidential and Vice Presidential officials. It's time to step up our efforts to make clear just how broad is the outrage against Gore's very direct role in this policy, and how strong the support for our position.

BEGIN ACTION

The following excellent sign-on letter, drafted by James Love, Director of the Ralph Nader-created Consumer Project on Technology (one of the most knowledgeable and determined U.S. leaders in the fight for access to medicines), is a clear summary of these issues. Already over 200 academics and leaders of AIDS and health care organizations worldwide (including from South Africa) have signed on to this. Please join them, and forward this to everyone you know in the AIDS or health worlds. While we are not looking for formal organizational endorsements, we would prefer that all individuals signing on list some affiliation with either an organization, a university or a political office. Except for well-known individuals, Jamie wants to limit signers to two per organization (preferably the highest ranking). WE MUST HAVE ALL RESPONSES BACK ABSOLUTELY NO LATER THAN 9:00 PM EAST COAST TIME ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1999 so that we can quickly release it to the media.

If you are willing to sign, please send the following information to James Love by email love@cptech.org or by fax 202.234.5176 (phone: 202.387.8030). (Please cc your response to me at bobl@poz.com).

Yes, include my name:
Name:
Title (optional):
Affiliation (optional):
City, State, Country:

Also, for internal records of the Health GAP Coalition, please include:

E-mail address:
Phone no.:
Fax no.:

For those NOT already on the Health GAP Coalition ongoing e-mail list, would you like to be added?

____ Yes ____ No.

Meanwhile, regardless of whether you choose to sign on, we hope you will take the time to send a fax or place a call to Vice President Gore calling upon him to reverse this outrageous policy. Phone: 202-456-2326; fax: 202-456-7044.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me or Jamie Love. For more info, see http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa

Again: Signatures will be accepted through June 30, 1999.

Thanks for your concern.

Bob Lederer
Health GAP Coalition

P.S. Note that the first section (under the heading "Sign-on letter...") is not part of the actual text - just a quick summary.

END ACTION

Sign-on letter to Vice President Gore regarding his opposition to African access to essential medicines

Over the past three years public health groups have repeatedly petitioned Vice President Gore (co-chair of the US/South Africa Binational Commission) and US trade organizations to stop pressuring South Africa and other developing countries over to access to medicines.

The disputes involve complex intellectual property and trade matters. In essence, the US government is demanding that South Africa, India, Thailand and many other countries not enact provisions in WTO (World Trade Organization) rules on intellectual property that would lower drug prices. The US position is that WTO rules regarding protection of patent rights are not high enough.

Africa is suffering from a mind boggling public health emergency. According to the US Surgeon General, in nine south African nations, 20% to 26% of people between the ages of 15 and 49 are infected with HIV/AIDS. The disease is also widespread and growing in Thailand, India and other parts of the world, and is associated also with new epidemics in tuberculousis, meningitis and other diseases. Public health authorities believe this is creating new treatment resistance strains of infectious illnesses.
So far all efforts to change US policy have failed. On April 30, 1999, Vice President Gore authorized the USTR (US Trade Representative) to issue a sweeping new review of South Africa policies on compulsory licensing, parallel imports and approval of generic drugs such as Taxol. Among other things, the US government is officially punishing South African for permitting its public health officials to speak out on trade and intellectual property issues in the World Health Organization.

Public health groups now are trying to reach a broader audience. We are asking for signatures on the following letter to the Vice President. We hope we can raise enough public awareness in this issue that the Vice President will be forced to change US policy. Please help circulate this important letter.

James Love love@cptech.org 202.387.8030
http://www.cptech.org
BEGIN LETTER

Dear Vice President Gore,

We are writing to express opposition to trade pressures you are bringing against the people of South Africa over their struggle to obtain access to essential medicines.

The White House dispute with South Africa concerns three basic points.

The South Africa government has indicated it wants to use compulsory licensing of medical patents to produce cheaper copies of HIV drugs and other essential medicines. This is of course legal under the WTO/TRIPS agreement, subject to Article 31 safeguards.

The South Africa government wants to authorize "parallel imports" of pharmaceuticals, so that it can buy drugs in the United States, Europe or elsewhere, in order to get the best world price. As you know, parallel importing of pharmaceuticals is legal under Article 6 of the WTO/TRIPS agreement, and is a common practice in Europe.

The South African government has approved generic versions of Taxol, a US government invention for treating cancer.

As co-chairman of the US/South Africa Binational Commission (BNC) you have authorized a wide range of trade pressures against South Africa, much of which is documented in a February 5, 1999 report to the Congress by the US Department of State. (See: http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/stdept-feb51999.html).

Despite increasing criticism of the US bilateral pressures on South Africa, here and internationally, your office has authorized new trade pressures against South Africa on April 30, 1999. (http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/sa301-ap99.html)

The April 30, 1999 announcement of a Special 301 out-of-cycle review of trade pressures against South Africa ignored every shred of information that has been provided to your office by public health groups. Indeed, this most recent announcement is basically a recycled version of the February 16, 1999 submissions by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures Association (PhRMA), the trade association that represents giant drug companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson that are trying to stop South Africa from implementing policies to cut costs for pharmaceuticals in South Africa.

It is shocking that the US government is adapting such an aggressive trade policy on behalf of US pharmaceutical companies, when all of sub-Saharan Africa is confronted with a public health crisis of historical dimensions. The US Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher, recently wrote in the Journal of the America Medical Association that "HIV/AIDS can be likened to the plague that decimated the population of Europe in the 14th century." Dr. Satcher says that "in many southern African countries, HIV/AIDS has become an unprecedented emergency, with 20% to 26% of people between the ages of 15 and 49 infected."

This is a here-and-now emergency. It is not a hypothetical or potential emergency. These people will die without access to pharmaceutical drugs.

Your response to this emergency should be to find ways to save lives. But look what you are doing.

You are aggressively seeking the repeal of legislation in South Africa that would permit that country to do what nations in Europe do, use parallel imports to buy drugs at the best world price. South Africa wants to use market forces to cut drug costs. You are pushing to protect pharmaceutical companies from global competition, thereby forcing the South Africa people to pay premiums to buy drugs.

You are punishing South Africa for even speaking out in favor of compulsory licensing of HIV/AIDS and other essential medicines. The April 30, 1999 report on South Africa complains that:

During the past year, South African representatives have led a faction of nations in the World Health Organization (WHO) in calling for a reduction in the level of protection provided for pharmaceuticals in TRIPS.

In fact, everything South Africa is seeking to do is legal under the WTO/TRIPS agreement, so this and countless other statements by US government officials are bald lies. But regardless, the exercise of free speech in international forums is an astonishing basis for trade sanctions. As an elected official, indeed, as a human, how would you act if 20 percent of all sexually active young people in the United States were infected with a fatal disease, and a foreign country was trying to prevent you from purchasing drugs on the global market to save money, and was preventing you from licensing firms to manufacture life saving medicines? Would you simply show up at the World Health Assembly and docilely applaud the actions of that country? Even if that foreign country was engaged in a relentless public relations campaign to label every legal action as a form of piracy or lawlessness? At what point would you have the guts to tell the world the truth, and to speak out on behalf of millions of infected young men and women?

You are punishing South Africa for giving approval to generic versions of Taxol, a cancer drug that was invented by the US government. There are aspects of the US government complaint about Taxol that are absurd, on technical grounds, such as the insistence that South Africa extend longer periods of data exclusivity than are required in the United States. But the larger issue is more basic. Why on earth should Vice President Al Gore or any other US government employee seek to prevent global competition for Taxol, a life saving cancer drug that was invented and developed by the US National Institutes of Health? Taxol was in NIH sponsored Phase III trials before the Bush Administration gave BMS exclusive rights to use NIH research for drug approvals. What is the moral basis for extending the BMS monopoly on Taxol in a country that is so poor?

As the Vice President of the United States you are in a position to do much good or much harm in the world. US voters will soon be asked to determine if you should be the next President of the United States. Please explain why they should choose you.

Sincerely,

James Love
Director
Consumer Project on Technology

END LETTER -- James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030, by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org

Bob Lederer Senior Editor, POZ Magazine: 349 W. 12th Street, 2d fl.
New York, NY 10014
phone: (212) 242-2163 x216 (24-hour voicemail) fax: (212) 675-8505
email: bobl@poz.com

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