In a recent WHO debate in Oslo, I gather that even FM Scherer (my undergrad thesis supervisor and someone we are of course to take very seriously on IO issues) began to realise that his prior support for patent-protected discrim-pricing by Big Pharma, to justify increased R&D capacity, was not borne out by reality.
Since we have many millions of human beings who will die in Africa in coming years because we cannot reduce AIDS to the chronic diabetes-like disease it has become for rich Northerners, thanks to Big Pharma's capacity to generate billions in profits and pay off politicians like Al Gore to do their dirty work, the solutions to this corporate-driven holocaust are emerging through grassroots campaining here: steal Big Pharma's patents through "compulsory licensing" and produce generics (or at the very least parallel-import well-tested versions from Thailand, India or Brazil, whose health ministries fortunately have as little regard for intellectual property rights as did Korea, Taiwan, Germany or the US etc etc when they industrialised).
As is to be expected (and as is now on display at the Durban World Conference Against Racims), the SA government snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in many ways on this issue (gory details forthcoming in a couple of chapters of my book, *Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance,* from Africa World Press, Trenton, in a couple of weeks). The basic problem is Mbeki's and trade minister Alec Erwin's fealty to globo-corporate rule (as is on display in Mexico where Erwin is tryiing to get a "like-minded group" (sic) of subimperial powers to endorse a new WTO round--and sadly, it appears that the yank delegation may have broken Brazil's former nationalistic resolve yesterday by holding out a vague promise of ag liberalisation).
So Brad, how can you be serious about "subsidies" for Big Pharma? This kind of talk really holds back the movement to decommodify life-saving drugs for Africa, just like Jeffrey Sachs and the Gates Foundation's nonsense fund. dDo you know what Big Pharma does with the superprofits? Have you seen their CEO pay packages, or compared their advertising budgets with R&D? Do you know what their operations in Africa look like (have you read LeCarre's Constant Gardener, for instance)? Do you know how they hook doctors and pharmacists onto their products? Do you know how little they've attempted to set up distribution networks in Africa where essential drugs are most needed and most scarce? Have you seen what their buddies/protectors at the IFIs -- and your old employer the Treasury -- have done to the fabric of the African public health systems through their insane full-cost-recovery conditionality?
Why aren't you comrades scaring them with talk of nationalisation instead?! You've got huge constituencies that just need a little awakening to the merits of generic production (instead of crossing the Canadian border for their far cheaper drugs). The Nader people have been superb on this, and LBOers really shouldn't lag so far behind this curve...
> Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 13:46:32 -0700
> From: Brad DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu>
> It seems pretty clear to me that on net we should be subsidizing
> pharmaceuticals. There are some amazing drugs out there. The NIH is
> very, very good at doing basic research. But there is no reason to
> think that a publicly-funded bureaucracy is particularly good at the
> process of drug development.
> How to subsidize pharmaceuticals is a genuinely hard question...
Patrick Bond (pbond at wn.apc.org) home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa phone: (2711) 614-8088 work: University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa work email: bond.p at pdm.wits.ac.za work phone: (2711) 717-3917 work fax: (2711) 484-2729 cellphone: (27) 83-633-5548 * Municipal Services Project website -- http://www.queensu.ca/msp