AIDS TREATMENT NEWS - December 14, 2005
John S. James

Summary: The World Trade Organization may make permanent drug-export rules that have failed to help a single patient in the two years they have been in effect.

Countries are now being pressured to make permanent the August 30, 2003 WTO language supposedly written to allow poor countries access to generic medicines when they cannot produce their own. As AIDS Treatment News reported at the time, "Organizations actually providing treatment in developing countries fear that the new system will obstruct access, and that poor countries that cannot manufacture their own pharmaceuticals will be worse off in the future (AIDS Treatment News #394, September 12, 2003, http://www.aegis.org/pubs/atn/2003/ATN39401.html). These provisions have never been used in the two years since they were provisionally adopted -- not a single patient has benefited. Many experts believe the provisions are unworkable -- deliberately made that way in an effort to strengthen pharmaceutical patents, even at the cost of denying necessary treatment to hundreds of millions of patients in the future.

U.S. patients could be affected, too, as the U.S. promised never to use the provision intended for poor countries. In case of a bird-flu epidemic, Roche will not be able to produce nearly enough Tamiflu to meet the demand, at any price. While the U.S. could in theory ignore its agreement and import from generic companies, the Katrina experience shows that government response can stop while paperwork or policy decisions sit on desks of officials too busy to get to it all, while people die as a result. Even more importantly, an agreement that suppresses generic production and commerce in normal times could mean factories are not built, making it impossible to scale up production rapidly enough in an emergency.

The Africa Group of countries had submitted a proposal to fix some of the problems in the August 30, 2003 WTO language, but it seems to be largely ignored in the current negotiations.

More than 50 non-governmental organizations have already signed the statement (early December 2005) urging the world's governments not to accept a bad deal. For the text of the statement and the list of signers so far, visit the Consumer Project on Technology's page,
http://www.cptech.org/ip/wto/p6/ngos12032005.html

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