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Author Topic:   sickening
Harpyr
Newflake

Posts: 0
From: Alaska
Registered: Jun 2010

posted March 21, 2004 12:00 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Harpyr     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
US Firms Try to Block Cheap AIDS Drugs
by Sarah Boseley

The US, under pressure from its giant pharmaceutical companies, is trying to undermine the use in poor countries of cheap, copycat AIDS drugs, made by "pirate", generic companies but validated by the World Health Organization, campaigners claim.

US drug companies want the money promised for President George Bush's AIDS plan to be spent on their products.

The American department of health and human sciences has now convened a conference in Botswana at the end of the month that will question the WHO's approval process for generic drugs, known as "pre-qualification".

If the cheap drugs, which sell for less than £165 per patient per year, are discredited and the more expensive brand-name drugs are bought instead, the limited money available for treatment will help fewer people and reduce the WHO's hopes of getting 3 million on treatment by 2005.

"It is not quality and safety and efficacy they [the American companies] are concerned about, but the protection of patents," said Rachel Cohen of Médecins sans Frontières in the US. "The real reason this conference is being held is to come up with ways of undermining generic drugs."

Plans to put millions of people on drugs to try to stem the AIDS epidemic are based in most African countries on the purchase of cheap copies of drugs invented and under patent in the US and Europe. People with HIV need a daily cocktail of three drugs to suppress the virus in the body and stay alive and well.

Because the patents on the component drugs are held by different multinationals, only the generic companies make a basic three-in-one pill. A very simple regime, taking one pill, twice a day, is considered to be most feasible in poor countries. Scientists working for the WHO have examined and approved certain generic three-in-one pills.

About 50,000 people are already taking these generic AIDS drugs. MSF, which runs free AIDS treatment programmes in Africa, gives them to some 9,000 patients. In Zimbabwe, it treats patients for £109 to £136 a year. A program by the US Centers for Disease Control uses brand-name drugs at £325 per patient per year. In addition, the patient has to take six pills a day, instead of two.

When President Bush pledged £8bn for AIDS in his state of the union address last year, and hailed the plunge in drug prices to £165 a year, it was assumed that the US would be willing to buy generics to make the money go further. However, Randall Tobias, the former chief executive of the giant US drug company Eli Lilly and the man appointed to head the president's AIDS strategy, claims that generic drugs manufactured overseas may not be made to the consistency and quality of those manufactured in the US.

"It would be a disaster if we invested in drugs that were not consistent, don't have all the right components and we just don't know whether some of these do or do not," he told the House of Representatives' international relations committee earlier this month.

But WHO officials involved in approving the generic drugs defend their system, pointing out that the drug regulatory agencies of France, Switzerland, Canada and South Africa are among those involved in the process.

The Guardian

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trillian
Newflake

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From:
Registered: Apr 2009

posted March 23, 2004 01:26 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for trillian     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
This makes me sad.

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TINK
unregistered
posted March 23, 2004 08:34 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Somedays I just want to find another planet to live on.

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Randall
Webmaster

Posts: 4782
From: The Goober Galaxy
Registered: Apr 2009

posted March 24, 2004 01:36 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Randall     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

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"Never mentally imagine for another that which you would not want to experience for yourself, since the mental image you send out inevitably comes back to you." Rebecca Clark

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