2nd post: endorse letter against Pharma's South Africa lawsuit

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Any additional endorsers to the Health GAP/Treatment Action Group/GMHC

sign-on letter in opposition to the legal battle by Big Pharma against the

South African Government for attempting to make life extending medications

more accessible?

e mail signatures to: asia@...

Thanks,

Asia

Health GAP Coalition

asia@...

-----------------

January 29, 2001

Dear: Bayer

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Eli Lilly & Company

GlaxoKline

Hoecsht n Roussel

Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceutica

Merck, Sharp, & Dohme

Novartis

Pharmacia & Upjohn

Rhone-Poulenc Rorer

Roche Products

Schering-Plough

Warner-Lambert

Wyeth

Zeneca, South Africa

Boehringer-Ingelheim

F. Hoffman-La Roche

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association of South Africa

[incomplete list of plaintiffs]

January 29 2001

We the undersigned are HIV/AIDS treatment activists, human rights

advocates, women's organizations, and other concerned individuals and

groups. You are receiving this letter because you are suing the government

of South Africa in an effort to maintain high prices for patented

pharmaceuticals, which will prevent millions of people from obtaining life

extending treatment (Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South

Africa versus the President of South Africa, case no. 4183/98). As you

know, oral arguments on this case will begin March 5, 2001 before the High

Court in Pretoria. This three-year lawsuit, a protracted effort to derail

implementation of South African Medicines and Related Substances Control

Act ( " the Medicines Act " ), is having a deadly impact on South African

people and citizens of poor countries around the world. Therefore we

demand you immediately remove yourself as a plaintiff from this lawsuit.

The Medicines Act is an effort by the South Africa government to reform

apartheid-era legislation and to increase affordable medication access for

its people through familiar provisions including parallel importing,

compulsory licensing, and generic drug substitution.

The grave crisis in

lack of access to medication in South Africa cannot be overemphasized: in

the case of HIV disease, more than 4.3 million South Africans are infected

with HIV but less than 0.2 percent of infected people have access to drug

treatment to stabilize disease progression and extend life. Your lawsuit

has tied the hands of the South African government, making it unable to

implement potentially life-saving reforms while South African citizens die

preventable deaths every day.

The Medicines Act, you claim, would unfairly infringe on the intellectual

property rights of drug makers and would cost substantial profits. In

fact, the entire continent of Africa generates less than 1.3 percent of

global profits from drug sales. Clearly your concern lies not with the

lives of the tens of millions of poor people who have no access to drugs,

but with protecting your unfettered access to the few in the North who are

willing to pay top dollar, no questions asked.

While a slim minority of people with HIV in wealthy countries reap the

life extending benefits of overpriced HIV medications, 90 percent of the

world's 36 million people with HIV have absolutely no hope of anything

beyond a death sentence, including virtually all of the 4.3 million people

with HIV living in South Africa. But companies-including yours-claim they

are doing enough to increase HIV drug access for the tens of millions of

people who have no access to HIV treatment.

For example, the much-hyped UN/drug company HIV medication price reduction

initiative, touted by industry as a far reaching, innovative program, has

been roundly criticized as moving too slowly, subjecting individual

countries to prolonged imbalanced negotiations, and having an unacceptably

narrow impact. You and the other 41 plaintiffs in this case are

preventing South Africa from implementing its domestic plan to end

inequity in medication access. Battling the extraordinary devastation

wreaked by the AIDS crisis requires many strategies and modes of

attack-not only industry-controlled charity programs.

We do not claim that affordable drugs are a panacea in the fight to end

the global AIDS crisis. But truly affordable medication is the foundation

of any meaningful effort that will actually save lives.

The shameful three-year battle by your company and the other plaintiffs is

a wholehearted effort to ensure that medication is denied to those who

need it most. This lawsuit stands squarely in the path of South Africans,

as well as millions from other countries who are closly watching this

precendent-setting case and who are desperately seeking access to life

extending, affordable medication.

You have a choice: unless you take

action and remove yourself from the lawsuit, you will be known forever as

the company who sued to prevent the South African government from daring

to increase the availability of life-extending medication for its

citizens.

Your lawsuit directly threatens the lives of millions. We

therefore call on you to withdraw from the PMA of South Africa lawsuit

without further delay.

Sincerely,

[DRAFT--List in Formation]

Health GAP Coalition, USA

Treatment Action Group, New York, NY

Gay Men's Health Crisis, New York, NY

ACT UP New York, NY

ACT UP Philadelphia, PA

ACT UP East Bay, Oakland, CA

Survive AIDS (formerly ACT UP Golden Gate), San Francisco, CA

ACT UP Paris

AIDS Action, Washington, DC

American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), USA

Project Inform, San Francisco, CA

Canadian Treatment Advocates Council, Toronto, Canada

Donna Rae Palmer, Director, Mobilization Against AIDS, San Francisco, CA

Scondras, Director, Search for a Cure, Boston, MA

s, Director, Critical Path AIDS Project, Philadelphia, PA

Flynn, Director, New York City AIDS Housing Network, NY

, AIDS Treatment News, Philadelphia, PA

African American AIDS Policy and Training Institute, Los Angeles, CA

Robin Gorna, Executive Director, Australian Federation of AIDS

Organizations

Alternative Information & Development Center (AIDC), Cape Town, South

Africa

Salih Booker, Executive Director, Africa Policy Information Center (APIC),

Washington, D.C.

Africa Fund/American Committee on Africa, New York, NY

Slatter, General Coordinator, Development Alternatives with Women

for a New Era (DAWN)

Joint Clinical Research Center, Kampala, Uganda

Homer Hobi, Director, Positive Humanists and Friends, San Francisco, CA

Brook K. Baker, Boston Global Action Network Africa AIDS Project

Alissa Pines Batson, New York City Council

s Duda, President, São o State AIDS/NGO Forum, São o, Brazil

Olexiy Buyadgie, Director, New Names, Odessa, Ukraine

Children's Rights Centre, South Africa

Coalition for Children's Rights in an HIV Positive World, South Africa

Lynda Dee, Executive Director, AIDS Action Baltimore, MD

Ambrosini, Director, Youth Health Empowerment Project,

Philadelphia, PA

Lark Lands, POZ Magazine

Phill , AIDS Social Policy Archive of the University of Southern

California, USA

Grinberg, President, Foundation for AIDS & Immune Research, Los

Angeles, CA

Weissman, Essential Action, Washington DC

Jeff Getty, San Francisco, CA

Bill Arnold, Title II Community AIDS National Network

Lillian Thiemann, Community Prescription Service

Donna Rae Palmer, Mobilization Against AIDS San Francisco, CA

Scondras, Search for a Cure, Boston, MA

Lee Wildes, Director, African AIDS Network

s, Critical Path AIDS Project, Philadelphia, PA

Flynn, New York City AIDS Housing Network, New York, NY

Fornataro, Executive Director, AIDS Treatment Data Network, New

York, NY

, AIDS Treatment News, Philadelphia, PA

New York AIDS Coalition, New York, NY

Jeffries, Access Project Director, AIDS Treatment Data Network,

New York, NY

, SMART University, New York, NY

Nate Miley, Alameda County Supervisor, Oakland, CA

Mike Palmedo, Consumer Project on Technology, Washington DC

Bass and Cindra Feuer, Global AIDS Collaborative for Care Treatment

and Support, New York, NY

Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Québec, Canada

Rodrigo Pascal, President, VIVO POSITIVO, National Coordinating Committee

of PWAs, Santiago, Chile

Stern, Director, Associación Agua Buena, San José, Costa Rica

Judie Blair, South Africa Development Fund, Boston, MA

Anuar Luna, Mexican Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS/Red Mexicana de

Personas que Viven con VIH/SIDA

Father Bill O'Donnell, St. ph the Worker Catholic Church, Berkeley, CA

Rev. Mark , McGee Avenue Baptist Church, Berkeley, CA

Kriss Worthington, Berkeley City Council, Berkeley, CA

Middle East Childrens Alliance, Berkeley, CA

Vice Mayor Maudelle Shirek, Berkeley, CA

Iversen, former co-chair, HIV Services Planning Council, Oakland, CA

Boneberg, Director, Global AIDS Action Network

Ezio Tavora dos Santos Filho, Grupo Pela VIDDA, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Irl Barefield, Executive Director, AIDS Research Alliance, Los Angeles, CA

VOICE, Dublin, Ireland

Carol DeVoe, Globalvision, Inc.

Gottemoeller, Global Campaign for Microbicides, USA

Fritz, South Africa

, San Francisco, CA

Gifford , USA

Anne Peticolas, Austin, TX

Amabile, Washington D.C.

Merrill Cole, Ph.D. Seattle, WA

Eve Remba, New York, NY

G. Santiago, New York, NY

Siplon, PhD, Burlington, VT

cc: The Honorable Thabo Mbeki, President, Republic of South Africa

> Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Minister of Health, Republic of

> South Africa

> Zackie Achmat, Chairperson, Treatment Action Campaign

> The Honorable Kofi n, Secretary General, United Nations

> Wolfensohn, President, The World Bank

> Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Secretary General, World Health

> Organization

> Dr. Piot, Executive Director, UNAIDS

> The Honorable Colin , Secretary of State, USA

> Zoellick, United State Trade Representative-Designate

> Congressional Black Caucus

###### s ######

###### ACT UP Philadelphia ######

###### jdavids@... ######

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