Brazil gets 40% cut on AIDS drugs

[Lawrence]

So this whole thing about AIDs patents, in the end, amounts to Brazil hard
bargaining and finally getting a lower price. Here then is the power of a
state and the way it surpassess what even the most militant and active
activist group can achieve. ACT UP has demanded lower prices and never
gotten a cut like this.


>From the New York Times today:

SÃO PAULO, Brazil, Aug. 31 - The Swiss drug giant Roche Holding (news/quote)
reached an agreement with Brazilian health authorities today to cut the
price of the AIDS drug Viracept by a further 40 percent, putting an end to
threats by the government to break the patent and produce the drug locally.

The new discount reduces the price of Viracept in Brazil to about 30 percent
of what Roche charges in the United States.

The agreement comes as a relief to the pharmaceutical industry. If Brazil
had carried out its threat to ignore Roche's patent on Viracept, drug
companies believed, a host of other developing countries might have followed
its lead and begun manufacturing patented drugs for AIDS and other diseases.
Poor countries have complained loudly that international drug companies
charge far more for many medicines than they can afford to pay.