The WTO Drug Deal
How Hope was Bargained Away

by Carol Goar

September 5, 2003,The Toronto Star

 http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1062713411592&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

There was a time when health activists thought a global trade deal on
affordable medicines would be an
achievement worth celebrating.

Now they have one. But they're not celebrating.

Last weekend, members of the World Trade Organization agreed on a plan
to offer poor countries improved
access to life-saving drugs. The deal, which ended a 21-month test of
wills between the United States and
the developing world, was hailed as a breakthrough by relieved negotiators.

Canada's trade minister, Pierre Pettigrew, called it proof that the
146-member WTO "can handle trade
challenges as well as humanitarian issues."

Richard Elliott, director of policy and research at the Canadian
HIV/AIDS Legal Network, wishes he could
be as ebullient.

He acknowledges that the Aug. 30 decision might do some good at the
margins. But it falls so far short of
what HIV/AIDS sufferers in Africa and Asia need - and what they were
promised - that he cannot cheer.

To understand the sense of letdown that Elliott and other Third World
advocates are feeling, it helps to
go back to the beginning of this round of trade negotiations. The launch
took place in the remote sheikdom
of Qatar in November of 2001.

Defying predictions of failure, trade ministers emerged from their
six-day meeting with an agreement to
forge a new global trade pact by 2005. The linchpin of their accord was
a pledge by all members to work
out rules permitting poor countries to produce or import cut-rate drugs
to fight deadly diseases such as
AIDS.

Even skeptics dared to believe that - for once - globalization might
produce something positive.

Their hopes soon faded.

The task of converting the ministerial consensus into a legal regime
allowing poor countries to override
drug patents proved impossible for trade negotiators. They haggled endlessly.

Meanwhile, the political consensus reached in Qatar began to fall apart.
The U.S., backed by Japan and the
Europe Union, insisted that limits be placed on the number of diseases
eligible for cheap medicines.
Washington also demanded safeguards to prevent low-cost drugs intended
for the Third World from leaking
back into Western markets.

Delegates from the developing countries, in turn, accused the U.S. and
its allies of taking their marching
orders from the powerful pharmaceutical industry.

The longer the talks went on, the testier they became. The WTO's
deadline of Dec. 31, 2002, for a drug
deal passed without an agreement. Several extensions came and went.

It wasn't until a few weeks ago that negotiators made an all-out effort
to break the impasse. This sudden
sense of urgency had little to do with the fact that AIDS kills 6,000
people a day in Africa. It was
prompted by next week's WTO ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Member governments, deadlocked on the critical issue of agricultural
subsidies, wanted something to show
for almost two years' work. A drug deal, they felt, would send trade
ministers into their Sept. 10 to 14
meeting with some badly needed momentum.

Elliott is a realist. He knows that political motives always trump
humanitarian concerns at the global
trade bargaining table. But he cannot live with a compromise so flawed
that will leave essential medicines
beyond the reach of millions of AIDS sufferers in Africa and Asia.

The deal announced last weekend in Geneva has so many caveats and
restrictions that it will take years to
get a trickle of discount drugs flowing into developing countries.

First, any nation seeking to import generic (no name) versions of
patented pharmaceutical products must
convince the WTO that it has a genuine "national health emergency" on
its hands and no capacity to produce
the drugs it needs. This will require extensive ó and expensive ó paperwork.

Second, it must take "reasonable measures" to prevent any cut-rate
medicine it imports from being sold
outside is borders. Most poor countries have neither the means nor the
money to fulfil this obligation.

Third, manufacturers of generic drugs will be expected to use special
packaging and labeling for products
destined for developing countries to minimize the risk that they will be
sold in wealthy nations. This
will drive up the cost of life-saving drugs.

Taken together, Elliott argues, these conditions will make the system
almost unworkable.

He doesn't think it is fair that developing countries have to jump
through hoops to save lives. He doesn't
think it's right that the WTO has backtracked on its original commitment
to make cheap drugs available to
the world's most vulnerable people.

In spite of all this, Elliott hopes Canada will be one of the first
nations to start supplying generic
drugs to AIDS-ravaged countries. That would require changes in the
Patent Act. "The least we can do is
remove any legal obstacles at our end of things," he says.

Elliott will watch next week's WTO meeting in Cancun with weary
detachment.

He has seen how easily a big win can turn into a big disappointment.

Copyright 1996-2003. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited



 http://www.sleepybrain.net/vanilla.html

 http://awol.objector.org/artistprofiles/welfarepoets.html

 http://ilovepoetry.com/search.asp?keywords=braithwaite&orderBy=date

 http://www.dpgrecordz.com/fredwreck/