Doha: Big Pharma outmaneuvered by activists

[Guest guest]

WSJ November 14, 2001

Health: Deal Will Allow Poor Nations to Ignore

Patents to Meet Public-Health Needs

By GEOFF WINESTOCK and HELENE COOPER

Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

DOHA, Qatar -- The pharmaceutical industry is scrambling to limit the

damage that might result from a deal hammered out by World Trade

Organization negotiators this week that declares that poor countries can

ignore drug-company patents and buy cheap generic drugs to meet

public-health needs.

The drug industry has long argued that countries, even poor ones, must

honor its patent rights or else the industry won't have an incentive to

develop new drugs. Under intense political and public pressure, some

companies have in the past year eased their position on patents for

drugs to treat AIDS in poor countries. But the WTO deal goes further:

Drug companies sought narrow language to encompass only health pandemics

such as AIDS, but under the pact, illnesses from cancer to diabetes to

asthma could qualify.

How the deal was struck shows how the industry was outmaneuvered by

activists.

Just as WTO negotiations here reached a crisis on Monday morning, a

fretful Alan Holmer, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and

Manufacturers of America, fired off a letter to U.S. Trade

Representative Zoellick to warn against any compromise that might

weaken drug patents.

Too late. Within hours, elated negotiators from poor countries were

passing around a draft agreement that declares that public health trumps

drug patents. " We agree that the [WTO] does not and should not prevent

members from taking measures to protect public health, " the agreement

said. " We affirm that the agreement ... be interpreted and implemented

in a manner ... to ensure access to medicines for all. "

Mr. Holmer didn't return phone messages seeking comment.

While U.S. trade negotiators here maintain they haven't weakened WTO

legal protections for drug patents, the drug industry worries the

agreement is bound to embolden poor countries to get cheap generics

where they can.

AIDS activists, who showed up here in droves to battle drug-company

lobbyists, were ecstatic. " It's like the WTO looked at the signs of the

demonstrators on the street, and then put in a declaration and adopted

it, " said Love, director of Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on

Technology.

Officials from Brazil -- where AIDS drugs are free and the fight for

greater access to life-saving medicines is a cause célèbre -- were also

elated. " Our expectations were fully met, " said o Teixeira, Brazil's

top AIDS official. " Even six months ago, this was unthinkable. " Brazil

is the only country that sent both its top health and AIDS officials to

the meeting.

Tuesday, drug lobbyists at the meeting here were still struggling to

figure out the pact's meaning. Vague language in the agreement, they

fretted, could lead some countries, especially India, to continue to

flout patents.

But their bosses back in the U.S. and Europe said they knew concessions

were likely. " I wouldn't say that we're upset about this, " said

Pekarek, a spokeswoman for GlaxoKline PLC. " The language [of the

declaration] maintains the integrity of " WTO protections of patents.

Ager, director general of the European Federation of the

Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, agreed. " It's still very

much a political declaration, " not a legal change to the WTO rules, he

said.

Not everyone in the industry was so sanguine. " I am concerned, " said

Vasella, chairman and chief executive of Novartis AG. " It's

important that the compromise express care for developing countries. "

But without patents, profits aren't possible, and research suffers, he

said.

Most trade envoys here said they assume the drug-patent agreement would

take effect regardless of whether the WTO conducts and concludes a new

round of trade-liberalization talks, but that isn't assured. " In the

WTO, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, " one WTO official

said.

From the start, the drug-patents issue dominated talks here in Doha.

Lobbyists from U.S., Swiss and European drug companies all descended on

the meeting to protect their patents. But unlike in 1993, when

intellectual-property protections were first negotiated as part of the

initial WTO pact, this time the lobbyists were matched by AIDS activists

who proved to be a well-coordinated group of opponents.

Even before negotiations started, AIDS activists were pressing delegates

from poorer countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia to hold fast to

their demands that the agreement allow them to override drug patents for

a variety of ailments and not just pandemics such as AIDS. They also

hounded the negotiators from the U.S., Europe and Switzerland, meeting

with them again and again, to draft the agreement.

During a bus ride to one pre-conference meeting, the activists swarmed

Finnish delegate Hannele Tikkanen. They demanded -- and received --

three meetings with U.S. negotiators, then passed the negotiators'

cellphone numbers around.

Sometimes the battle between the drug lobbyists and the activists looked

like a spy movie. " Shhh, that's Harvey Bale -- he'll hear us, " one Oxfam

America activist whispered after spotting the director general of the

International Organization of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers on a

late-night shuttle bus from the convention center. Oxfam is a charitable

health organization.

At one point, the activists considered " outing " one drug lobbyist who

sneaked into the WTO meeting using a press pass, but then thought better

of it when they realized that about half of the activists themselves

were also posing as reporters. The representative of the World Health

Organization, which has close links to AIDS activists, was booted from

one meeting of trade officials after the WTO complained he had no right

to be there.

U.S. trade officials, once considered by activists to be allied with the

devil himself on the patents issue, soon seemed almost angelic,

especially when compared to the hard-line Europeans, particularly the

Swiss. During a meeting Sunday at the Sheraton with the Swiss

negotiators, Mr. Love of the Nader group listened for 45 minutes while

the Swiss refused to move on the patents issue. The agreement should be

limited to just AIDS, the Swiss envoys argued. What if African

countries, they asked, used the pact to steal Novartis and other

companies' patents on beauty products?

Mr. Love walked out of the meeting shaking his head.

But the Americans' traditional posture of defending patents suffered a

severe blow several weeks ago, when Tommy , U.S. Secretary for

Health and Human Services, threatened to seize Bayer AG's patent on

Cipro, an antibiotic to fight anthrax, unless Bayer lowered its price.

" We constantly reminded delegates of anthrax, " said Mr. Teixeira of

Brazil.

Since Brazil began producing local versions of expensive, foreign-made

AIDS drugs, it has managed to bring down their prices by about 82%,

according to the Brazil health ministry. As a result of widespread use

of the drugs, the number of AIDS-related deaths and the infection rate

in the country have both been cut in half in recent years. These

statistics have made Brazil's AIDS program a model for the developing

world.

Drug lobbyists did manage to win one point. The agreement fobs off to a

committee the activists' demand that the WTO explicitly state that it's

acceptable for countries that manufacture cheap generics -- such as

Brazil and India -- to export those drugs to other countries.

-- Fuhrmans in furt, Miriam Jordan in Sao o and

Gardiner in Washington contributed to this article.

______________________________________________

http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=011112000760