An excellent posting on Kaletra (Lopinavir (ABT-378), an antiretroviral of the protease inhibitor class, a component of combination therapy to treat HIV/AIDS.

Abbott is working hard to ensure that people living with AIDS in Thailand are charged as much as possible for the drug, and that Thailand cannot produce affordable generic versions, even though Thailand has the legal right to do so according to international law.

In an incredibly child-like and coercive response, Abbott has pulled 7 new lifesaving drugs from the Thai market's registration process..

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Comment: The eight deadly lies of Big Pharma
Brook K Baker
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[Mods note: below is a comment by Brook Baker and responds to some of the statements of pharmaceutical companies.

Please send us more responses. Thanks]
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As Thailand issues more compulsory licences for AIDS and heart medicines that are compliant with the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Thailand's laws, the multinational drug industry and its allies are unleashing an ever more strident public disinformation campaign.

Lie No-1: Mellisa Brotz, a spokeswoman for Abbott Industries: "We do not view [the compulsory licence on Kaletra] legal or in the best interest of patients."

Truth: Thailand's compulsory licence on Kaletra is lawful in every respect: (1) it is a fully TRIPS-compliant Article 31(b) licence issued on valid public health grounds and for government, non-commercial use, which requires no advance negotiation with the patent holder; (2) it is fully complaint with Section 51 of the Thai Patent Act, which directly authorises government, non-commercial use licenses without prior negotiation; and (3) it sets a royalty at .5 per cent of the sale price, which royalty is appealable by the affected patent holder. Although drug companies complain the loudest that Thailand has failed to engage in prior negotiation, in fact, the record shows that Thailand has engaged in many fruitless negotiations with the drug industry for the past two years.

Lie No-2: Roger Bates, American Enterprise Institute: "It is generally understood that compulsory licences should be confined to 'public health crises, including those relating to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics,' which represent a 'national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency'."

Truth: This assertion is the most widely circulated and most repeated misrepresentation that Big Pharma has propagated. The Doha Declaration of 2001 is exquisitely clear that, "each member has the right to grant compulsory licences and the freedom to determine the grounds upon which such licences are granted". Although there are special rules for emergencies that permit expedited procedures for granting a licence, the right to issue compulsory licences is not limited to public-health emergencies.

Teera Chakajnarodom, president of Thailand's Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers' Association, takes the alleged emergency rule and raises it one degree higher: "The law allows such actions with pharmaceutical products only in cases of extreme national emergencies, or during wartime."

Lie No-3: Teera again: "After the company does 10 years of research, and then suddenly the Thai government would like to impose the compulsory licence, taking away their property, their assets."

Truth: Patents are not "property" in the traditional sense - they are government-granted rights that are intended to balance the interests of innovators and the public at large, and which are granted by governments with many express and implied conditions, including the right to issue compulsory licences. Governments around the world, including the US, have issued thousands of compulsory licences since the late nineteenth century, including on pharmaceutical products. Moreover, Thailand had its compulsory licence law on the books when all three companies, Merck, Abbott, and Sanofi-Aventis, filed their patent claims in Thailand.

Lie No-4: Khun Teera again: "Everything is negotiable."

Truth: For monopoly-based drug companies, everything isn't negotiable. Abbott has flatly refused for nearly six months to lower its mid-tier price for Kaletra. Moreover, even when negotiating deeper discount prices, drug companies frequently extract promises that countries will refrain from seeking other cheaper sources of supply. In this context, drug companies are mainly interested in preventing generic competition.

Paradoxically, in pursuing the generic-freeze-out option, drug companies will occasionally give concessions to bigger middle-income countries that "make the market" even though they would not do so for smaller and poorer countries like Guatemala.

Lie No-5: Harvey Bale, director-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations: "Compulsory licensing can be a route to commercial abuse."

Truth: Monopolies and excessive pricing are not commercial abuse, but competition and lower prices are - go figure. For the hugely rich, R&D drug industry (more than 90 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market) to complain about commercial abuse by generic producers (less than 10 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market) is deeply ironic.

A particular form of this complaint has been asserted by Pharma apologists Roger Bates and Ronald Cass. These two industry-sponsored pundits complain that licenses might eventually be granted to Thailand's own publicly owned, profit-making pharmaceutical company, the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO). They assert that this will be a form of cheating because production by the GPO will create a commercial advantage to domestic producers, who might thereafter become regional suppliers to other countries.

Nothing in TRIPS prohibits granting licences to profit-making entities. Since Big Pharma has disinvested in developing countries' pharmaceutical capacity post-TRIPS, it makes sense for countries to increase their own capacity to meet domestic and regional needs for essential medicines.

Lie No-6: Harvey Bale: "Compulsory licensing can ... put patients at risk." Merck, Abbott, and Sanofi-Aventis also warn that overriding patents risks jeopardising quality.

In terms of product quality, Bale roll outs out another old chestnut - "generics are inferior". He neglects to mention that multiple generic versions of efavirenz manufactured in India have already received pre-qualification at the WHO. Although it is true that the Thai Government Pharmaceutical Organisation has not yet received WHO-pre-qualification on its first-line ARVs, it is building a good manufacturing practices manufacturing plant after which it will surely meet global standards.

Lie No-7: All of the sources from Big Pharma previously quoted have said that compulsory licences will reduce incentives for innovation.

Truth: All of Asia (except Japan) and all of Africa comprise only 5.1 per cent of the global pharmaceutical market, according to Information Management Group.

Even though low- and middle-income markets are growing faster than developed country markets, drug companies continue to make the vast bulk of their profits from sales in the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan, which collectively buy nearly 89 per cent of drugs by dollar volume. Drug companies always argue that compulsory licences interfere with their R&D incentives, but they never admit that developing countries' compulsory licences never affect their monopoly profits in rich country markets. How can South and Southeast Asia's infinitesimal share of the global market really affect R&D incentive?

Lie No-8: Abbott: "[Because] Thailand has chosen to break patents on a number of medicines, ignoring the patent system ... we've [lawfully] elected not to introduce new medicines."

Truth: As discussed above, Thailand has not ignored the patent system - it has used one of its important lawful flexibilities for licensing access to patented products and processes.

Moreover, instead of Thailand breaking the law, it is Abbott that has engaged in an unprecedented and probably illegal withdrawal from the Thai market, taking seven important medicines, including a heat-stable form of Kaletra, out of the drug registration process.

To withhold life-saving medicines from the market in retaliation for lawful use of lawful flexibilities is not only unjustifiable, it is abusive and unconscionable.


- Brook K Baker is a professor in The Programme on Human Rights and the Global Economy at Northeastern University's School of Law
(Published on 21 April 2007 in The Nation, Thailand)

Online at: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2007/04/21/opinion/opinion_30032324.php


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Stay Connected - Speak your world!

A posting from SEA-AIDS (sea-aids@eforums.healthdev.org)

Since clearly losing two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is not enough, and since we barely have enough troops to "win" one of those wars (whatever that means?) John McCain decided it would be a brilliant third war to BOMB IRAN!




Please check out MoveOn.org's counter ad. They need to raise $100,000 to run the ad next week. I just donated $25, and I am broke as a joke.


It infuriates me to hear these ignorant imperialist GOP hawks talk about democratizing the Middle East and about bringing "FREEDOM" to the Muslim peoples. When things don't go their way, instead of coming to the logical conclusion that American Imperialism is not wanted or needed in the region, they say "Well, that's just because democracy is incompatible with Islam!"

Do they forget that Britan and France brutally colonized the region for the greater part of a century? Do they forget that the colonial powers defeated attempts at constitutional governments and participatory democracies in the region in order to maintain control and revenue collection?

What about their colonization of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Qater, Kuwait, Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Libya, etc etc etc?

What about Britain and France testing out their new weaponry, Aerial Bombardment, on civilian populations in Iraq, Morocco, Syria and Libya? It's not as if this fact were hidden. In face the colonizers, the Royal Air Force (RAF) wrote a handbook on aerial bombardment:

Notes on the Method of Employment of the Air Arm in Iraq

"within 45 minutes a full-sized village... can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed and injured by four or five planes which offer them no real target and no opportunity for glory or avarice."

America was looked upon, due to its historical beggining as an anti-colonial nation that gained its independence from British domination, as a benevolent state in the region.

But once oil was discovered and once the battle for control over the region flowered toward the end of the Cold war, America became the new oppressor.

I QUOTE:

"Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors."
-Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, Egypt, July 2, 1798


"Our armies to not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators... It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth." - General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

"Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this."
- Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003


In 1951, following two years of massive student strikes against British control of Iran’s natural resources, , Iran’s Parliament voted to nationalize the AIOC, returning control of its oil reserves to native control. Up till then, since 1901, Britain controlled 84% of the industry’s revenue. The new Prime Minister, Mossadeq, won unanimous support for this controversial move, and was re-elected into second term, despite a world-wide boycott that Britain, its allies, and colonies, imposed on Iranian oil. Fearing the loss of one of the most fertile countries to feed into the then-nascent demand for fossil fuels, the United States CIA and British M16 financed and supported a military coup that dissolved Parliament and established a totalitarian dictatorship of Shah Pahlavi. The Shah gave America 40% control of Iran’s oil industry and gave the rest to British Petroleum (BP). So much for bringing democracy to the Middle East.

( Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East , Rashid Khalidi, 2004)

33 people were killed today by a crazed shooter on a rampage at a college in Virginia.

Our illustrious President's reaction-

--That sucks, but remember, me and the NRA firmly support Americans' right to bear arms! Don't try this at home, kids!--


AP: President Bush Described as 'Horrified' by Shootings at Virginia Tech

Reported by The Associated Press
April 16, 2007

President Bush was described as shocked and saddened by the mass
shooting at Virginia Tech, the deadliest campus violence ever in this
country. White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino says the
president was "horrified and his immediate reaction was one of deep
concern for the families of the victims, the victims themselves, the
students, the professors and all the people of Virginia who have dealt
with this shocking incident."

Perino said "The president believes that there is a right for people
to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed."

Perino said federal assistance is available if Virginia authorities
ask for help.

In the House, which returned today from a two-week recess, Speaker
Nancy Pelosi interrupted proceedings to lead a moment of silence in
remembrance.

Darfur Collides With Olympics, and China Yields

New York Times
By HELENE COOPER
Published: April 13, 2007

"WASHINGTON, April 12 — For the past two years, China has protected the Sudanese government as the United States and Britain have pushed for United Nations Security Council sanctions against Sudan for the violence in Darfur....

Ms. Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the “Genocide Olympics” and calling on corporate sponsors and even Mr. Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Mr. Spielberg that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,” a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films.

Four days later, Mr. Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao of China, condemning the killings in Darfur and asking the Chinese government to use its influence in the region “to bring an end to the human suffering there,” according to Mr. Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.

China soon dispatched Mr. Zhai to Darfur, a turnaround that served as a classic study of how a pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in a vulnerable spot at a vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not."


SWEET. Props to Mia Farrow for taking an incredibly controversial but crucial stand. Ahhh the infallibility of celebrity! She can get away with what a head of state never could.

I think people ought to boycott the China Olympics anyway, given that they blocked any type of meaningful action in Sudan, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

Quite IRONIC I must say that there is "a gigantic clock in Tiananmen Square counting down the minutes to the Games, and Olympic souvenir stores sprouting all over with the “One World, One Dream” Beijing Olympics motto."

< a href-"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989"> Tiananmen Square is the site of one of the worst massacres of peaceful protesters in recent history if one can say such a thing.......

One World One Dream? Ummmm where does Sudan factor into that dream?

"By a 10-1 Board of Supervisors' vote, San Francisco became the first major American city to ban the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags by supermarkets, drug stores and other large retailers."


What great news!!!!!!!!!!!

When will NYC follow suit? When will NYC resume recycling anyway!
The Basics; Taking Aim at All Those Plastic Bags

April 1, 2007
The Basics; Taking Aim at All Those Plastic Bags
By CHRIS CONWAY

Paper or plastic?

San Francisco last week offered an answer to the question. Paper is fine. But plastic isn't -- unless it's biodegradable.

By a 10-1 Board of Supervisors' vote, San Francisco became the first major American city to ban the use of non-biodegradable plastic bags by supermarkets, drug stores and other large retailers.

The paper-or-plastic question has long been a vexing one. Paper bags, of course, are biodegradable and recyclable, and are made from trees, a renewable resource. But the production of paper bags generates significantly more air and water pollution; manufacturing and recycling them requires more energy than their plastic cousins do, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Paper bags also take up comparatively more space in landfills, where they are slow to degrade, like most everything in a landfill. A study for the American Forest and Paper Association estimated that about seven billion paper bags were used in the United States in 2003.

On the other hand, plastic bags made of polyethylene, which dominate the market, are non-biodegradable and are made from crude oil and natural gas, both nonrenewable resources. They can be recycled, but are mostly discarded.

The E.P.A. estimated that only 5.2 percent of the plastic bags and sacks in the municipal waste stream in 2005 were recycled, compared with 21 percent of paper bags and sacks. And there are also horror stories about animals swallowing them and starving to death.

Plastic bags have virtually taken over the grocery market since they were first put at check-out stands in 1977. Ninety percent of all grocery bags are now plastic, according to the Progressive Bag Alliance, an industry group of plastic bag manufacturers. Estimates of the number of plastic bags used around the world each year vary wildly -- from 100 billion to as many as one trillion.

Whatever the number, it's a lot. And that has made for a lot of plastic bag litter -- which, the E.P.A. says, can take 1,000 years to decompose.

One reason for the abundance of plastic bags is economic. A standard plastic grocery bag costs about a penny to produce, according to the plastics industry, compared with 4 cents to 5 cents for a paper bag. Compostable plastic bags would cost from 8 cents to a dime, the industry says, although supporters of the San Francisco action say the cost would drop as more local governments require them.

Several states have addressed the issue in other ways. California now requires large supermarkets to set up a system for customers to recycle plastic bags. Rhode Island has teamed up with grocers to collect plastic bags for recycling.

Because of a tax, Ireland has cut the use of plastic bags by 90 percent, according to the Irish government. Taking matters further, several countries, among them Bangladesh and Bhutan, have banned them.

Ikea, the Swedish home furnishings and accessories chain, has just begun charging customers 5 cents per plastic bag in the United States, which it donates to American Forests, a conservation group. On average, its United States stores have gone through about 70 million a year. In Britain, Ikea says, it has seen a 95 percent drop in plastic bag use since it began charging for them there last spring.

Yet another alternative is to sell consumers reusable bags.

''The paper versus plastics question takes us off the issue, which is consumption,'' says Vincent Cobb, who offers reusable bags and containers on the Internet. He admits to using plastic bags, which he calls a ''fantastic product,'' but not as many as in the past.

''Getting into the habit of bringing your own shopping bag,'' he says, ''can slash this problem across the board.'' CHRIS CONWAY