US restricting Anti-HIV Meds?

" France accused the United States on Tuesday of pressuring developing countries to give up their right to make cheap generic HIV drugs in return for free-trade agreements � with President Jacques Chirac calling the tactic "tantamount to blackmail." "

news.yahoo.com.../ap/20040713/ap_on_he_me /aids_meeting_20

I know, I know, it's France. But still this is kinda suspicious. The US doesn't want Africa, with over 25 million infected with HIV, to produce cheap drugs to helps its people??

The US is contributing $15Billion to the International prevention and treatment of HIV. So why would they want to restrict Africa from creating these drugs? Population control??? Keeping the US pharmacutical companies from losing money???

There is nothing new puzziling about nthis. The U.S. government made HIV to kill gays, and black people. (No offense).

[edit on 13-7-2004 by AD5673]

from what i understand, the taiwan goverment has accepted a large sum of money from W to keep the 'cure' out of global reach.
the cure is still available to people of means.

Originally posted by dr goodrich
from what i understand, the taiwan goverment has accepted a large sum of money from W to keep the 'cure' out of global reach.
the cure is still available to people of means.

Wow, I must be somewhat uninformed about the current situation of the world's HIV 'epidemic', I didn't realize it was as bad as that, or i suppose i should say that i didnt realize how corrupt these people are...

I will have to do some more research on this subject. If anyone has any good links, I would appreciate them.

i think the US is doing this because their concerned about the quality of these drugs, generic drugs do have a difference in quality and usually dont work very well.

Wow! I would have to say that this is one of the most paranoid threads I have seen.

Ask yourself why the U.S would ask countries to restrict manufacture of a medicine.

1. Intellectual property. We own those drugs and we will NEVER get paid.
2. Do you actually think it will be Zambia, Botswanna and Mauritannia doing the manufacturing? NO! It will be Tailand and France and a host of non-struggling countries that have the money to steal ideas and profit from them.
3. For Gods sake, we already are paying for them. Few people in Niger have the money so now we will pay for inferior doo doo.
4 No the cure is not out yet.

This is an example of half-baked conclusions being reached because of several reasons, from poor reading comprehension to anti-US rhetoric to crying foul because of not being able to profiteer from a sad situation, as France is wanting to do.

Here is the position of the major US drug companies, in a nutshell:

Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell resumed after a few minutes, saying the protection of patents drives innovation by ensuring companies will earn profits on important inventions.

Without intellectual property rights, "you would have exactly the same number of drugs that has been discovered in the Soviet Union in the past 50 years, which I think is about one," he said.

This quote is from this article:
Pfizer


The US has done more in terms of donating money, medicine, and technology to third world countries to help fight HIV/AIDS than any other country on earth. The French are crying foul because as crmanager said in so many words, they want to profit from this situation by being able to manufacture drugs discovered in the US.

Sort of like the story of the Little Red Hen.

And ADS5673, knock it off with your childish, inflammatory comments. What you said has absolutely no basis in fact. If it is factual, post credible sources to your allegations.

This it BS from france it is nothing more that to hate the US the US donates more money than all of the other countires combined to fight AID's also HIV and AID's affects all people so how would it only kill "black people"?
On a related story check out this link.

Oblivious Japan May Be on Brink of AIDS Explosion

[edit on 14-7-2004 by WestPoint23]

Originally posted by WestPoint23
This it BS from france it si nothing more that to hate the US the US donates more money than all of the other countires combined to fight AID's also HIV and AIS's affects all people so how would it only kill "black people"?
On a related story check out this link.

Oblivious Japan May Be on Brink of AIDS Explosion

you're right the US donates more money, but as a percentage of GDP, the US is the stingiest country in the OECD in terms of foreign aid. Check out:

www.globalissues.org...
-koji K.

So why should we give out our money the US goes first this concept of you have money give it to them is absurd its our money

Originally posted by koji_K
you're right the US donates more money, but as a percentage of GDP, the US is the stingiest country in the OECD in terms of foreign aid.
-koji K.

Before you go making the US sound like a miser, you should include the following from your source:

Almost all rich nations fail this obligation
Even though these targets and agendas have been set, in the past decade and more almost all rich nations have constantly failed to reach their agreed obligations of the 0.7% target. Instead of 0.7%, the amount of aid has been around 0.2 to 0.25%, some $100 billion short.

In addition some interesting observations can be made. For example:

USA's aid, in terms of percentage of their GNP is already lowest of any industrialized nation in the world, though paradoxically in the last three years, their dollar amount has been the highest.

The US is one of the few that have shown an increase in terms of percentage donated, year after year.

The US is also the first to help out other nations militarily, which isn't cheap, and to assist in cases of natural disaster. We are a very generous, caring people.

US generosity comes with a prices, for nations of third world countries.

French complain on this issue have a foundation. The treadment of aids is very extensive and very expensive even for people of more afluent countries like US.

US Trade Policy,

US have a battle to keep the prices on drugs high, The US
government has organized a cross agency team that is largely
directed by the global pharmaceutical industry to monitor and
influence legislation in virtually every country on earth.

US is also against any use of license or imports on these other countries, and with this, these countries can not have assets to lest expensive drugs.

Now one question if US is so humanitarian and we are, Why this president is so against allowing this countries to get their drugs for lest money? People from these countries are dying because they can not afford to pay for drugs. And that is a fact.

This exposes Bush's pre-election promise of $15 billion to help fight AIDS in Africa as really a way to put billions of dollars in the pockets of American pharmaceutical companies and the American contractors hired to administer the program.

The WHO drug approval standards are very similar if not identical to the FDA standards and many more lives could be saved by using the significantly cheaper generic drugs which are currently available now, as opposed to waiting a year or so for FDA approval.

The $15 billion dollar program is also slow to get off the ground because it was not done initially in collaboration with the governments of the 15 countries that the US selected to help. There is an article on the front page of the NY Times today about how difficult it has been for these countries to actually get the funds that the U.S. has pledged and how using the branded-drugs instead of the generics is problematic because of the cost.

In the case of Mozambique, the local government already had a successful program in place that used WHO-approved generic drugs that were easier to use (fewer pills) and cheaper than the branded drugs, but the US came in and tried to force them to switch to branded drugs. The US also wanted to use expensive non-governmental administrators (American contractors) to oversee the program. Neither made sense as more lives could be saved if the drugs and administration cost less. After a long and heated negotiation, the U.S. reluctantly agreed to fund their existing program, probably because it would have been bad PR for Bush if he backed out, but it exposes the true nature of what this $15 billion funding is all about.

Another big issue is that the funding comes with the stipulation that abstinence is stressed and condoms are not provided, which forces Bush's religious agenda, but is deadly in practice.

The article can be found at:
www.nytimes.com...

The thing is that the so call15 billion has been redirected towards the USAID Child Survival Account which, despite its attractive name, funds population control programs and family planning clinics. So forget about the people that are already infected and let�s teach abstinences to the rest. More money wasted away. Bush does not believe in condoms but abstinences.



www.lifesite.net...

Originally posted by marg6043
Now one question if US is so humanitarian and we are, Why this president is so against allowing this countries to get their drugs for lest money? People from these countries are dying because they can not afford to pay for drugs.

And that is a fact.

This is an incorrect interpretation of the issue. We are supplying the medicines for free in many cases.

It is very expensive to invest the time and money to make safe, effective drugs. This investment has been made by US drug companies.

The French want to take this "recipe" and manufacture the drugs and sell them for cheap and make huge profits. This is wrong, and this is what the US drug companies are against.

As far as condoms go, the US has supplied MILLIONS of condoms to African nations. They go unused because the natives think that wearing them make them less manly. They will not use them!!!

The only way to overcome that obstacle is with education, which will take precious time which they do not have.

Originally posted by jsobecky

Originally posted by marg6043
Now one question if US is so humanitarian and we are, Why this president is so against allowing this countries to get their drugs for lest money? People from these countries are dying because they can not afford to pay for drugs.

And that is a fact.

This is an incorrect interpretation of the issue. We are supplying the medicines for free in many cases.

It is very expensive to invest the time and money to make safe, effective drugs. This investment has been made by US drug companies.

The French want to take this "recipe" and manufacture the drugs and sell them for cheap and make huge profits. This is wrong, and this is what the US drug companies are against.

As far as condoms go, the US has supplied MILLIONS of condoms to African nations. They go unused because the natives think that wearing them make them less manly. They will not use them!!!

The only way to overcome that obstacle is with education, which will take precious time which they do not have.

i dont think it's the french who would be making the drugs.

-koji K.

It is not from France that the generic drugs will come, but from India, Thailand, and Brazil, The problem is that the money this administrations is allocating to buy drugs for Africa comes with a twist it can has to be used for buying drugs manufactured in US and occurs they are expensive.

It have taken 13 month for Bush since the president approved plan and now the money is starting to flow, meanwhile thousands of people die everyday in Africa.

To add more salt to the injury, the person in charge Bush's global AIDS coordinator, Ambassador Randall Tobias, is a former chairman and chief executive officer of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, so instead of buying lest expensive drugs from other countries, he is going to used the money to buy drugs from US.

In other worlds US is giving money but actually giving it to the big private pharmaceuticals in US.


www.worldrevolution.org...