US Blocks Worldwide Cheap Drugs Deal
Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, last night blocked a global deal to provide cheap drugs to poor countries, following intense lobbying of the White House by America’s pharmaceutical giants.
Faced with furious opposition from all the other 140 members of the World Trade Organisation, the US refused to relax global patent laws which keep the price of drugs beyond reach of most developing countries.
“The United States has announced it cannot join the consensus,” the Brazilian negotiator, Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, said.
Sources in Geneva said last night that the negotiating strategy had come straight from the White House, with Mr Cheney seizing the reins from America’s trade negotiator, Robert Zoellick.
The industry argues that it spends billions a year on drug research and that if copycat companies can override their patents and manufacture drugs at bargain prices, research will dry up.
However, aid agencies lobbying on behalf of poor countries pointed out that the cut-price drugs will only be sold in countries which cannot afford to buy them at first-world prices. They accused the White House of being in the pocket of big US drug corporations.
“The joke in Geneva this morning is that they couldn’t make a decision because the CEOs of Merck and Pfizer were still in bed,” said Jamie Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, a US lobby group. “George Bush is arguing that diseases his own children receive treatment for are off limits to poor children in poor countries.”
Aside from HIV/Aids, drug companies do almost no research into the diseases on the US shortlist. It excludes diseases like cancer.
comment: Capitalisim with america at its head once again show its ugly face and contempt for human kind. If your ill or sick so what they say, we dont care you will pay thousands for drugs you cannot afford and if you think of creating your own substitute drugs we will put sanctions and sue you. Disgraceful !