[lbo-talk] CAFTA Trips

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Thu Jan 1 23:17:21 PST 2004


In Doug's most recently archived radio interview, Larry Hirns of the Center for Hemispheric affairs says that even if CAFTA delivers the "modest benefits" that the World Bank recently judged Mexico to have derived from NAFTA -- and leaving aside whether it adequately judged even the detriments it mentioned -- CAFTA will still be more than outweighed merely by the reassertion of intellectual property rights that it contains. According to Hirn, the four countries considering the treaty have some of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world, as well as being among some the world's poorest countries. And if CAFTA passes, it will will force them to stop producing the generic drugs they are currently producing -- thereby raising their annual treatment cost per patient from the current $140/yr to $10,000/yr.

The rest of the interview is interesting as well.

Michael



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