I want to share a link to an interesting article from the NYT, and an awesome post/commentary about the same article over at Racialicious. While this article discusses current issues in Malawi, many of the issues related to WTO/WB's treatment of African countries affects Ethiopia and the farmers there as well. The film Black Gold does a wonderful job describing the problems facing coffee farmers in Ethiopia specifically:

Today, World AIDS Day, has got me thinking a lot about patent law. Why? Because patent laws are a big part of the reason that 500,000 children will die of AIDS this year. This is in spite of the fact that there are drugs available that can make HIV a chronic but manageable disease, and that these drugs can be relatively inexpensive to produce.

Patents are basically temporary monopolies that the government gives inventors. Governments give people patents based on the theory that the higher prices and huge profits the patent (monopoly) gives them encourage people to innovate. But does this make sense in the pharmaceutical industry?

Consider this excerpt from There is No Me Without You, by Melissa Faye Greene:

the Boston Globe reported that of the best-selling 50 drugs approved from 1992-1997, 45 had received government funding. In 1998, the journal of Health Affairs reported that only 15% of the scientific articles underpinning patent applications for clinical medicines came from pharmaceutical industry research, while 54% came from universities, 13% from government labs, and the rest from other public and nonprofit institutions.

She goes on to discuss how the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 “enabled publicly supported universities and laboratories to transfer their patents to drug companies and to share in their profits." (Page 192)

Patents are not suitable or necessary for pharmaceuticals. Much of the innovation occurs at universities (using NIH grants – tax money) and then the most promising ones are sold off to the pharmaceutical companies, who sell them back to taxpayers at a huge profit. Further, the drugs that private companies are motivated to produce are the ones that will bring them the most profit, not the ones that will save the most lives. Why produce a drug to help treat pediatric AIDS patients in Africa, when you can make billions more on a drug for erectile dysfunction?

In addition, the push today is for stricter patent laws to be honored by other countries, like India, who used to have pretty lax intellectual property laws. If you remember the WTO protests, this was a big part of the reason so many people objected to the agreement. It required the countries signing it to honor the patents protecting Western companies and had disastrous results.

In 1998, one out of five adults in South Africa was HIV+, and the going rate for the brand name drugs to control it was $15,000 a year per person. However, companies that produce generic versions of these drugs (like those in India) were selling the drugs for about $200 a year per person. The South African government passed a law allowing its people to import these cheaper drugs from other countries. So what happened? The pharmaceutical companies tried to sue them, knowing that requiring South Africans to pay the full price for these drugs would mean the death of 20% of its people.

This week the Clinton Foundation announced that they brokered a deal with several European countries and an Indian drug company to produce pediatric AIDS drugs at an average price of $60 a year. This was desperately needed, since there are over two million children in Africa with HIV and just ten percent are receiving treatment. I sincerely hope that this deal provides a lot of publicity for the AIDS crisis and the immorality of the pharmaceutical industry. It is too easy for America to forget about and ignore.

Link to an article with more information about the Clinton Foundation’s new deal:

Clinton’s Foundation Brokers AIDS Deal

Link to an article about patent law and pharmaceuticals:

Strict International Patent Laws Hurt Developing Countries