Poor Nations Can Purchase Cheap Drugs Under Accord
The WTO finally comes to an agreement on the sale of generic versions of patented drugs to poor countries.
WASHINGTON,
Aug. 30 — The World Trade Organization agreed today to give poor
nations greater access to inexpensive life-saving medicine by altering
international trade rules.
After several days of nonstop negotiations and speeches, the trade
organization reached unanimous agreement this morning, just as its
meeting was concluding, after speeches by several African delegates who
said such an agreement could save millions of lives.
Under the accord, poor countries will be able to import generic
versions of expensive patented medicines, buying them from countries
like India and Brazil without running afoul of trade laws protecting
patent rights.
African countries and their supporters in nonprofit health groups have
been campaigning for such an agreement for years, saying that moral and
political arguments outweigh commercial considerations in the face of
epidemics like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
"This will absolutely save millions of lives that would be lost without
it," said Faizel Ismail, South Africa's permanent representative at the
World Trade Organization, in an interview from Geneva.
The breakthrough came earlier this week when the United States agreed
to the original proposal it had rejected last December.
Backed by the powerful American pharmaceutical lobby, the Bush
administration had prevented the trade organization from adopting the
measure, saying it should be restricted to a handful of diseases and
limited to certain countries. The European Union and Switzerland, the
other two delegations representing advanced pharmaceutical companies,
had accepted the proposal.
Nations from the developing world pointed out that without an
agreement, there was little hope for success at new talks in the
current trade round scheduled to begin in Cancun, Mexico, in September.
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The United States, however, only agreed to the accord after it won
acceptance of an additional statement setting out measures to ensure
that countries would not take advantage of it and reap commercial
profits rather than meet public health needs.
Robert B. Zoellick, the United States trade representative, said in a
statement that the Bush administration, "working with other W.T.O.
members and our pharmaceutical industry, has strived to bridge the many
differences and sought to develop with others constructive ideas about
how to move forward."
Several public health groups said, though, that the new statement
essentially doomed the accord by encasing it with enough bureaucratic
red tape to discourage poor nations from importing the drugs.
"Today's deal was designed to offer comfort to the U.S. and the Western
pharmaceutical industry," said Ellen 't Hoen, of Doctors Without
Borders, in a statement released from Paris. "Unfortunately, it offers
little comfort for poor patients. Global patent rules will continue to
drive up the price of medicines."
One
can't help feeling a little irritated by statements like those made by
Ellen 't Hoen. Doesn't she realize that pharmaceutical companies aren't
charities? It makes economic sense to allow poor countries to import
generic copies of patented drugs, as the market for the real thing
would have been essentially nonexistent in any case, but any agreement
that failed to restrict the possibility of imports into more prosperous
markets would be a terrible thing.
Drug development is an
extremely expensive, lengthy and risky exercise, and trade agreements
that undermine the markets for new drugs, however well-motivated they
may be, act as a disincentive to investment in therapies. Sure, one may
get the benefit of cheap drugs in the here and now, but this benefit
only seems worthwhile if one believes that no new drugs will ever be
necessary. Given the rapid evolutionary rates of most bacterial and
viral pathogens, such a conviction is simply the height of stupidity.
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