Drug giants bow to health needs

The international pharmaceutical industry suffered a rare setback on Thursday when it abandoned its challenge to a South African law which allows for the import of brand-name drugs used in the treatment of AIDS from nations where they are sold more cheaply. The settlement serves as belated recognition of public health needs and common sense.

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa and 39 international drug companies -- which together are worth more than 10 times South Africa's gross domestic product -- had been trying to block Pretoria's Medicines and Related Substances Control Amendment Act. They claimed the law was an infringement on the 20-year patent rights that guarantee funding for research into new and better drugs.

South African AIDS activists argue that the legislation is desperately needed by the 4.7 million South Africans living with HIV/AIDS, many of which cannot afford the life-extending drug cocktails shown to drastically cut AIDS deaths in many western countries.

Apart from the proposition that the right to health supersedes intellectual property rights, AIDS activists ventured the argument that the alleged violations of intellectual property rights do not threaten the companies' quest for profits, since tax breaks compensated them for their research and many compounds in patented drugs came from the research of scientists who were given public, not private sector funding.

Just how grossly overpriced AIDS drugs have become was exposed some months ago when Cipla, an Indian company, offered to produce a triple-combination HIV cocktail for less than a dollar a day for supply to international relief agencies on the condition that they provide it to AIDS sufferers for free. India, with tens of millions of impoverished citizens, has never played the giants' drug patent game.

The international pharmaceutical companies could turn the public tide against them by working with medical authorities in developing countries to provide ways of getting their miracle cures to the people who need them.

The drug companies have built massive empires in the noble cause of healing the sick. It is time they took some of those profits and put them back where they came from, instead of making lame, legalistic excuses while people die.

-- The Bangkok Post