NEWS April 10 2001

Related Articles
‘Pharming Crisis – The South African AIDS drugs scandal explained’ (CW Newsletter 2)

'Toxic Drugs are good for you' (CW 10) for more on GlaxoSmith-Kline's contempt for patients.

Campaign:
Action for South Africa
 Blair government backs drug companies

With the South African pharmaceuticals court case adjourned for the companies to gather evidence proving the fairness of their pricing policies (see ‘Pharming Crisis’CW Newsletter 2), the UK government has charged into the general debate on access to medicines - on the side of the drug giants.

On March 31, the Pharmaceutical Industry Competitiveness Task Force published its final report setting out how the government can best suck up to the drugs firms. Tony Blair wrote the foreword, endorsing the aims of the reprt and the pharmaceutical industry. The working groups focussing on intellectual property rights was chaired by Richard Sykes, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s largest drugs company and a main player in the South African court case.

Unsurprisingly, the report wholeheartedly supports the WTO’s TRIPS agreement on intellectual property rights, which would prevent developing countries from manufacturing or using cheap copies of patented drugs. It claims that weakening patent protection to permit wider access to drugs would be ‘counter productive’ – which is true, from the point of view of GlaxoSmithKline. The experience of Brazil, which has cut AIDS deaths by half after relaxing patent laws in order to provide cheaper drugs, shows how many lives could be saved if only the drugs giants could be over-ruled. The UK government position is also an isolated one – few other countries are on the companies’ side, as the EU and even the corporate-friendly US under Bush have come out in favour of South Africa’s moves to provide cheaper drugs in emergency situations.

This report – written by the industry, approved by the PM, proves, if proof were needed, how far the New Labour government has abdicated its responsibility to citizens (globally as well as nationally) in favour of brown-nosing corporations. Let those Africans die, seems to be the message, the UK economy is supreme.