|
Although many AIDS advocates are praising Brazil for its announcement that it will break Abbott Laboratories' patent on Kaletra, property-rights advocates and the pharmaceutical industry are saying the move is "government-sanctioned piracy" of intellectual property
The Brazilian has threatened to break the antiretroviral drug patent unless Abbott lowers the drug's price 42% to $1.17 per pill.
Brazilian Health Minister, Humberto Costa, on June 24, informed Abbott of its ultimatum regarding Kaletra.
Costa said that under the World Trade Organization's intellectual property agreement, governments can approve the domestic production of generic versions of patented drugs during emergency public health situations if they fail to reach an agreement with the patent holder.
The Brazilian Minister has said it would take about one year for Brazil to establish facilities to produce and test a generic version of Kaletra for efficacy and safety, and Brazil also is negotiating price reductions for Merck's Efavirenz and Gilead's Tenofovir.
Reaction
AIDS advocates say that WTO instituted the intellectual property exceptions to allow governments to make the types of decisions Brazil is making on Kaletra, and they are hoping that other countries such as India and China will follow Brazil's lead in threatening to break patents.
These advocates also hope Brazil will take steps to export generic antiretrovirals to other developing countries.
"We are the hostages of these companies, and compulsory licensing is a defense against the abuse of monopolies," Jorge Beloqui, head of an AIDS support group based in São Paulo, Brazil, said.
However, critics say the Brazilian government is using sympathy for HIV-positive people to rob profits from pharmaceutical companies.
Eric Noehrenberg, director of international trade and market for the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations, said many pharmaceutical companies that have invested heavily in Brazil might consider pulling out of the country if it breaks Abbott's patent on Kaletra.
"Companies are looking very hard at their presence in Brazil in light of these circumstances," Noehrenberg said (AP/Washington Times, 7/4).
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an organization representing more than three million businesses worldwide, is urging the Brazilian government to drop its threat to break the patent on Kaletra, The Hill reports (Rodeffer, The Hill, 7/6).
"Brazil's threat to strip patent rights from a U.S. company should concern all investors and every business around the world because of the precedent it sets for the treatment of intellectual property," Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue said, adding,
"While we share the Brazilian government's concern for the well-being of its citizens suffering from this terrible disease, the way to deal with this situation is through dialogue and partnership, not through threats.
"U.S. companies have always been willing to explore different possibilities with the government of Brazil to provide support to the national AIDS program".
Kaiser Network - www.kaisernetwork.org
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.