Message-ID: <384EC6B4.1CE7@erols.com> Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 15:59:32 -0500 From: John Daly <mailto:dalyj@erols.com> Subject: Re: subscription To: mailto:DEVEL-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Christian Labadie wrote:> Before you leave, consider the following post on the price of AIDS-drugs...
> will it become the source of future inequalities? Will those in turn
> generate new conflicts? The WTO issues aren't foreign to these aspects.
>
The Post article that Christian quoted was too narrowly conceived. It attributed the lack of AIDS medicines in Africa to US trade policies, but a broader foreign policy approach would be more fruitful. It IS possible to seek a trade policy which protects intellectual property rights (and thus supports beneficial high rates of innovation), and at the same time provide medication to AIDS victims in Africa.One way to do so would be through foreign assistance. Indeed provision of goods available in the US but not affordable by people in need is one of the best roles for foreign assistance. As the Merck & Co. donation of drugs to the Onchocerciasis program in Africa shows, drug companies will work with African nations and donors. I guess drug manufacturers would negotiate considerably lower prices for AIDS cocktails to a consortium that agreed to buy enough to deal in a humanitarian way with the African AIDS crisis. But the US (and other donors) are cutting foreign aid. I think the unwillingness of the US Congress to fund foreign assistance adequately is a bigger problem than a world trade regime which protects intellectual property rights.
Of course, if African nations were doing better economically they would be more able to afford medications they need. The effect of overall US foreign policy on African social and economic progress is perhaps where we should really be looking, rather than trade policy on pharmaceuticals.
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