Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - April 23, 2001
The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa and 39 international drug companies-which together are worth more than 10 times South Africa's gross domestic product-had been trying to block Pretoria's Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act. They claimed the law was an infringement on the 20-year patent rights that guarantee funding for research into new and better drugs.
South African Aids activists argue that the legislation is desperately needed by the 4.7 million South Africans living with HIV/Aids, many of which cannot afford the life-extending drug cocktails shown to drastically cut Aids deaths in many western countries. The new law allows South Africa to import or make the lifesaving drugs at a fraction of the cost of buying them from drug firms. The drug companies did not argue with the right of South Africa to produce or import generic drugs; their case applied exclusively to the import of brand-name medications.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, the British charity Oxfam, Aids advocacy group Treatment Action Campaign and South Africa's leading trade union all condemned the court action by the drug giants, charging them with immoral exploitation of human misery in order to earn excessive profits.
Apart from the proposition that the right to health supersedes intellectual property rights, Aids activists ventured the argument that the alleged violations of intellectual property rights do not threaten the companies' quest for profits, since tax breaks compensated them for their research and many compounds in patented drugs came from the research of scientists who were given public, not private, sector funding.
Former president Nelson Mandela added his condemnation of the drug companies' legal challenge, calling it a "gross error" and accusing them of charging exorbitant prices for their products which will lead to the agonising deaths of millions of impoverished Africans afflicted with this horrible disease.
Even before the settlement on Thursday, many companies were fighting back in the public relations war by offering drugs at steep discounts of up to 90%. Such offers are a wonderful step in the right direction. But to much of the world, and especially Aids sufferers in Africa who survive on less than one dollar a day, the cuts don't go far enough. Talking in terms of dollars to people who live day to day on pennies is insulting, and does nothing to alleviate their suffering.
Just how grossly overpriced Aids drugs have become was exposed some months ago when Cipla, an Indian company, offered to produce a triple-combination HIV cocktail for less than a dollar a day for supply to international relief agencies on the condition that they provide it to Aids sufferers for free. India, with tens of millions of impoverished citizens, has never played the giants' drug patent game.
The international pharmaceutical companies could turn the public tide against them by working with medical authorities in developing countries to provide ways of getting their miracle cures to the people who need them. The drug companies have built massive empires in the noble cause of healing the sick. It is time they took some of those profits and put them back where they came from, instead of making lame, legalistic excuses while people die.
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