Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Friday April 16, 1999
Lisa Richwine

As head of the U.S.-South Africa Binational Commission, Gore pressed South Africa to refrain from using some of its obscure trade powers designed to give its people better access to cheaper medicines, the State Department report said.

U.S. officials and drug makers argue the law giving South Africa the trade powers violates patent rights.

"U.S. government agencies have been engaged in a full court press with South African officials ... to convince the South African government to withdraw or amend the offending provisions" from the law, the report said.

The report was sent to Congress in February just ahead of Gore's latest trip to South Africa. The document has outraged consumer activists and AIDS groups, who say Gore is putting the interests of drug companies above the welfare of AIDS victims.

"Gore is representing the profit-glutted pharmaceutical industry, using the facilities of the U.S. government, to browbeat the South African Ministry of Health," consumer advocate Ralph Nader said.

A Gore spokesman, however, said the vice president was working to help AIDS patients by making sure drug companies maintain profit levels to develop new AIDS medications.

Gore and South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki "are committed to working together to chart a course that will meet the medical needs of those infected with HIV or AIDS, without cutting off the commercial incentives that fuel medical research in the first place," the spokesman said.

At issue is a section of the South African Medicines and Related Substances Act, a complicated law that aims to expand access to medicines in a country where 3 million of the 43 million citizens have HIV or AIDS.

Drug makers say this particular law goes too far in giving officials broad authority to ignore patents needed to protect their research.

During a meeting in Washington last August, Gore made protection of pharmaceutical patents a central focus in talks with Mbeki, the State Department report said.

The leaders agreed the United States would restore trade benefits suspended last year over this issue to South Africa if the countries made progress on patent issues, the report said.

Two months before that meeting, an official with the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria "made clear the possible ramifications of the article's implementation, including trade sanctions," the report said.

Standing next to Mbeki at a February news conference in Cape Town, Gore, the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, called AIDS "a crisis for South Africa" and said the problem "must be faced with a new level of urgency."

AIDS activists, however, criticized Gore for publicly promising to fight AIDS while working behind the scenes against South Africa's medicines law.

"It really is hypocritical for the administration to pretend to be concerned about AIDS when they're taking actions ... that are denying people access to very essential medicines," said Eric Sawyer, executive director of the HIV/AIDS Human Rights Project.

South Africa has not used the disputed portions of its Medicines and Related Substances Act, now tied up in court over a constitutional challenge.

But health and consumer groups have urged South Africa to use the law's power to bring cheaper AIDS drugs to the country's poor.

The groups are pushing for compulsory licenses, giving a local company the right to produce generic copies of drugs or import U.S. products through third parties at a lower price.

Gore, however, was more worried about competing for campaign dollars from drug companies than in helping AIDS patients, Nader charged.

Gore's only announced Democratic challenger, former Sen. Bill Bradley, hails from New Jersey, home of more than a dozen drug makers, Nader noted.

"He (Gore) wants to go up to New Jersey and curry favor with the pharmaceutical industry," Nader said.

Drug makers say they are unfairly being singled out as the bad guys in the debate. They say other factors besides price contribute to access problems, and they are working on ways to bring AIDS drugs to the most needy.

"There are ways to make drugs available to the poor in a country like South Africa," said Tom Bombelles of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association. "We need to look for economic answers to economic questions... and not say the answer to this economic question is we'll just steal (patents)."
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