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Aids / HIV - news summaries, news links

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Aids / HIV - political response - comment in diary.

links to information about AIDS / HIV
AIDS / HIV - links to information

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Date: 2003 February 27 Thursday.


While our attention has been distracted by the war, the Bush administration has been continuing to pursue other matters on its agenda, with consequences which may lead to more deaths than the war itself. Cheap drugs for the poor? Market access for poor farmers? Hell, no. Neither.

On Wednesday, the US took a decisive step towards the destruction of the World Trade Organization. The WTO's current trade round collapsed in Seattle in 1999 because the poor nations perceived that it offered them nothing, while granting new rights to the rich world's corporations. It was relaunched in Qatar in 2001 only because those nations were promised two concessions: they could override the patents on expensive drugs and import cheaper copies when public health was threatened, and they could expect a major reduction in the rich world's agricultural subsidies. At the WTO meeting in Geneva last week, the US flatly reneged on both promises.

The above is from an article by George Monbiot apparently published in The Guardian (in the UK) on 2003 February 25 Tuesday, meaning that "On Wednesday" refers to Wednesday 20th.

Today 2003 February 27 (Japan time) this article is available on the site www.commondreams.org under the heading "George Monbiot: By Tearing Up the Global Rulebook, the US is in Fact Undermining Its Own Imperial Rule..."

The same news is covered from a different angle by Michael Tomasky, a political columnist for New York magazine, who touches on the promise-breaking at the WTO in an article available on the www.prospect.org site, site of TAP, or The American Prospect. The link to Tomasky's article is here. Writing about "Former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.)", who seems to be a presidential candidate, Tomasky says, in part:-

WHILE NO ONE WAS WATCHING. On the President's Day holiday, Dean delivered an excellent foreign-policy speech -- specific, full of purpose and logical intention -- that can be dismissed as dovish only if you believe that desiring some measure of multilateral support before going to war makes one the moral equivalent of Neville Chamberlain. (You can read the speech here.) Multilateral, in Bush's Washington, has become a dirty word, despite the fact that most Americans consistently support multilateralism. I wonder how these same Americans would regard the news that last week, during a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, the Bush administration unilaterally shot down a long-sought agreement to allow poor nations to buy pharmaceuticals at cut-rate prices. (In December, TAP Online published this piece about how the United States continues to prevent poor countries from buying generic AIDS drugs, privileging the interests of pharmaceutical companies over the lives of Third World patients.)

The WTO's 144 member nations had agreed in Qatar in 2001 to loosen patent laws so that poor countries could buy cheap versions of pharmaceuticals capable of treating a broad range of diseases. Last December the Bush administration backed out. Guess which industry donated $60 million to the Republican Party in the last elections? After a stink was raised by member nations, Bush trade rep Robert Zoellick offered a "compromise" that was, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, "essentially a unilateral implementation of the American negotiating position." And the reason I quote the Journal? It was the only major American newspaper to cover the story.

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more news about Aids / HIV:-

World Trade Organisation (WTO) cheap drugs bid stymied after US balks - Reuters article last updated (time reference: 2002 December 25) on 2002 December 23.

The article is by Robert Evans and opens "The United States Friday effectively blocked agreement on a global pact to allow poor countries to buy cheap drugs to tackle epidemics such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, diplomats said."
Link active: 2002 December 25

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