Drug firms fight Lamy ‘threat’ to patents on life-saving medicines

Date: 09/03/2000

By Simon Taylor

THE European pharmaceuticals industry is battling to persuade the European Commission to drop its call for measures which campaigners claim would give some of the world's poorest people access to cheap life-saving medicines.

Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy held a secret meeting with the heads of four leading pharmaceuticals firms including Glaxo Wellcome, Aventis and Boeringer Ingelheim last week to discuss proposed changes to the World Trade Organisation's intellectual-property protection rules.

Under the existing TRIPs accord, which governs trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, governments can cancel firms' patents on drugs in special circumstances in response to health crises such as AIDS through a system known as compulsory licensing.

The Commission called last autumn for that right to be extended to 306 drugs listed by the World Health Organisation as 'essential medicines'. Supporters of the move claim that 94% of AIDS sufferers cannot afford the drugs they need because of high prices. The Thai government has, for example, recently been considering cancelling the patent on AIDS drug didanosine to cut the cost of the treatment.

But the pharmaceutical companies are bitterly opposed to the use of compulsory licensing, arguing that it does little to help people in developing countries because poor nations lack the basic infrastructure to deliver medicines effectively. They also warn that weak patent laws can be used by traders who buy up the cheaper drugs and sell them back into more lucrative markets in rich countries, hitting the profits of firms which have invested in developing new products.

"Patents are an essential part of our business. We have to fight all attempts to erode intellectual-property rights," said a spokesman for the European pharmaceutical industry association EFPIA.

But the global healthcare charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which is campaigning for developing countries to be given access to vital medicines, argues that compulsory licensing is the only solution when companies are unwilling to offer drugs at affordable prices or to give approval voluntarily for medicines to be produced locally.

Commission officials have refused to comment on the outcome of last week's meeting between Lamy and industry representatives, but campaigners fear that the Commissioner is moving towards accepting the companies' arguments.

They point to comments he made at a European Parliament hearing two weeks ago when he said that he did not think developing countries' health problems were linked to access to essential medicines but rather that it was a problem of "distribution and infrastructure".

MSF points out that although countries have the right to issue compulsory licenses under WTO rules, they can come under extreme political and economic pressure from richer states if they try to do so.

Last year, the US threatened trade sanctions against South Africa when it tried to introduce new laws to allow compulsory licensing. Lamy's predecessor Sir Leon Brittan supported Washington's action, warning South African Vice-President Thabo M'Beki in a letter in March 1998 that Pretoria's law on medicines was "at variance with South Africa's obligations under the WTO" and "its implementation would negatively affect the interests of the European pharmaceutical industry".

US President Bill Clinton only dropped the threat of trade sanctions after high-profile protests by AIDS campaigners.

The European pharmaceuticals industry is battling to persuade the European Commission to drop its call for measures which campaigners claim would give some of the world's poorest people access to cheap life-saving medicines. Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy has held a secret meeting with the heads of four leading pharmaceuticals firms including Glaxo Wellcome, Aventis and Boeringer Ingelheim to discuss proposed changes to the World Trade Organisation's intellectual-property protection rules.