In the discussion of why the US was kicked off the UN Human Rights Panel, I saw no commentary on the fact that the US was the only country not to support a resolution at that body that called for universal access to AIDS drugs. For those dying of AIDS around the world, the usual US rhetoric around human rights may seem pretty hollow when it privileges drug company profits over access to lifesaving drugs.-- NN
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Brazil and AIDS drugs
A cure for high prices
May 17th 2001 | BRASILIA
>From The Economist print edition
The United States and the drug firms have been worsted over patents
JOSE SERRA, Brazil's health minister, this week took his battle against the United States and multinational drug firms over phamaceutical patents to the World Health Organisation's annual assembly in Geneva. At the assembly, which runs until May 22nd, Mr Serra was due to propose a vote condemning the use of trade agreements to obstruct poor countries' access to cheap medicines. This is aimed at the United States, which in January, at the multinationals' urging, complained to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) about Brazil's patent law. Brazil claims that the involvement of the WTO threatens the country's widely praised programme for the prevention and treatment of AIDS.
Last month Brazil won a similar vote at the UN Human Rights Commission. The United States was the only country of the 53 represented not to support a motion urging governments to refrain from measures that would limit universal access to AIDS drugs. A month earlier, Merck, an American company, had agreed to cut sharply the price it charges Brazil for efavirenz, an AIDS treatment, after Mr Serra had threatened to break its patent. He is making a similar threat against Roche, a Swiss company, over another drug, nelfinavir. Roche has agreed to talk.