WTO trade agreement called hypocritical
By Sarah Lai Stirland

GENEVA, Switzerland, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- International humanitarian aid activists Wednesday questioned what they called hypocritical measures in the World Trade Organization's Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement that block Third World access to reasonably priced medicine.

Their complaints with the TRIPS agreement came just several days before their representatives join delegates from 141 other nations in Doha, Qatar, to monitor the talks on it.

"What's going to happen later this week and the beginning of next week is going to be very important and will change the way medicines are provided to developing countries (for the long term)," said Ellen 't Hoen, of the not-for-profit group Doctors Without Borders.

The TRIPS agreement is a global intellectual property measure that seeks to harmonize and establish minimal threshholds of protection for all kinds of intellectual property, ranging from patents on Barbie dolls to life-saving medicines.

Academics and lawyers who have studied the agreement say the overall effect globally is to increase the level of protection for intellectual property, since many countries do not have federal laws protecting such property.

The agreement establishes a period of 20 years before patents can expire and calls for countries at various levels of development to comply with the agreement by various deadlines.

Industrialized nations already should be enforcing federal laws complying with the agreements. Less developed countries do not have to comply until 2006.

Worried these patents would grant the world's largest pharmaceutical companies monopolies that would make life-saving drugs too expensive for their populations, 60 of the WTO developing country members have sought to have a new "declaration" inserted into the agreement. It would say, "Nothing in the TRIPs agreement shall prevent countries from taking measures in protecting and promote public health."

Doctors Without Borders, along with activist groups the Consumer Project in Technology in Washington, D.C., and the Health Gap Coalition in Philadelphia pointed to the threats by the United States and Canada to compulsorily license patented drugs, like Cipro, to ensure adequate supplies for their citizens in case of a massive bioterrorist attack, as an example of what Third World countries were trying to do for their own populaces.

After the initial threats, both Canada and United States governments were able to negotiate lower prices for the antibiotics while the pharmaceutical company patents remained intact.

"It dramaticizes really well what the risk to the public health really is when the sanctity of the patent is so viciously upheld at any cost whether here at home or abroad," said Asia Russell, an AIDS activist with the Health Gap Coalition.

Among other provisions, the activists and the 60 countries want the ability to enable compulsorily licensing of the patented drugs so generic versions can be made available to sick populations in their countries at lower cost.

But pharmaceutical companies oppose these measures, saying they would render patents ineffective and would remove the industry's incentive to research and develop new medicines. An industry spokesman called the activists misguided.

"We think that they're providing them false hopes in Africa and very poor people around the world to believe that if they change patent protection, they will have access to medicines," said Mark Grayson, spokesman for the trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Grayson also deflected criticism about pharmaceutical companies to governments of developing. "South Africa just announced a $5 billion program to build up their military armaments, submarines and things like that. They aren't putting any extra money into AIDs," he said.

James G. Conley, an engineering professor at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a partner at Chicago Partners, a company that helps companies with intellectual property strategies and valuations, said large publicly traded pharmaceutical companies hold a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to make as much money as they can.

In addition, he said, they have to recoup the huge costs associated with researching and developing new drugs. He said few pharmaceutical compounds researched ever make it to market so patents, which are effectively monopolies for a limited time period, are the only way to provide an incentive for drug companies to develop any new products.

"The costs of bringing a single drug to market often exceeds a quarter to half a billion U.S. dollars," he said. "What industry is going to take such a risk without some limited window to recover the cost of that investment?"

Conley suggested governments have to play a bigger role by coming up with their own innovative solutions. One way would be for the U.S. government to grant pharmaceutical companies tax breaks in exchange for lower drug prices. The tax breaks could be considered a form of foreign aid, he said. Or governments in Third World countries could offer the pharmaceutical companies tax breaks as incentives for developing drugs for local diseases.