Wall Street Journal - May 23, 2007

It wasn't for lack of encouragement in some quarters. The week before the meetings, Thailand's health minister, Dr. Mongkol Na Songkhla, swung through New York to great applause from packs of anti-intellectual property activists such Doctors Without Borders. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton even chimed in, standing next to Dr. Mongkol and declaring that: "No company will live or die because of high-price premiums for AIDS drugs in middle-income countries, but patients may."

The implication, as always, is that drug companies are squeezing poor countries in order to fill their corporate coffers. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the pharmaceutical companies whose patents Thailand seized tier their drug pricing: They expect to lose money in poor places like Africa, break even in middle-income countries like Thailand, and subsidize the rest from rich countries like the United States.

You'd never know that from the web of misinformation floating around Thailand's decision to seize HIV/AIDs drug patents from Merck and Abbott Laboratories, and a heart medication from Sanofi-Aventis. Dr. Mongkol felt so emboldened by the NGOs' public displays of affection that he told the Bangkok Post in a phone interview from Geneva last week that he's eyeing cancer drugs next.

He has experience making threats. By exploiting vague language in the World Trade Organization's intellectual property agreement, Dr. Mongkol browbeat Abbott Laboratories into reducing the price of its HIV/AIDs drug, Kaletra. Brazil followed suit, issuing a compulsory license on a Merck drug that Thailand had already seized.

Given that track record, you'd think a veritable gaggle of countries would be itching to try the same tactics at the WHO's World Health Assembly this week. But you'd be wrong. Not only did Thailand and Brazil not receive any strong public support from developed or developing countries, but their proposed referendum to ask the WHO to publicly endorse their actions was watered down, we're told -- by the Chinese.

The ringing silence is an indication that most countries understand what Thailand doesn't: that drug innovation isn't free. Like any other businesses, drug companies have to make money in order to reinvest in always-expensive research and development. By refusing to call on the WHO to support Thailand's actions, WHO members issued a quiet rebuke.

It's a happier picture for Bangkok at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDs (UNAids) governing body, the Program Coordinating Board, which Dr. Mongkol will chair starting in June. That's not a surprise, given that the current UNAids chief executive, Peter Piot, has been a vocal supporter of Thailand's drug patent seizures. At least Dr. Mongkol still has friends in high places.

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