On-line Petition to Make AIDS Affordable Overseas (More on Overseas Drug Copyrights)

Please see the Original Message posted below my comments.

This is one issue I'm not sure I understand correctly. Is this truly all about a stingy, heartless drug company? Or, is this a case of a foreign manufacturer side-stepping international trade and patent laws and agreements?

I am no apologist for big drug companies, but just because this is a revolutionary AIDS drug, and not a revolutionary polymer, are they being penalized with no chance to cash in on their invention?

Does it make sense to spend hundreds of millions of dollars (US tax dollars via grants and FDA approval as well as US private investment) to develop a drug, just to have a foreign manufacturer make knock-offs and undermine the world market for it? To allow an Indian manufacturer to market and sell the drug for pennies on the dollar outside the US, is it then fair that US citizens have to continue to pay the full US price?

A humanitarian need truly does exist, but the compulsory giving away of manufacturing and marketing rights of a proprietary product seems like the wrong way to satisfy it. Either way, the US citizen loses. It pays to develop the drug, it pays the higher domestic price for it. But, maybe the world attitude is that the US should pay to ameliorate the world of AIDS (and any other condition for which the price of medicine is cheaper in Canada), without any pretention for foreign government or foreign economic support or help.

N-


----- Original Message ----

Sign-on to help protect access to affordable medicines!!

Pharmaceutical company Novartis is taking the Indian
government to court. If the company wins, millions of
people across the globe could have their sources of
affordable medicines dry up.

Novartis was one of the 39 companies that took the South
African government to court five years ago, in an effort to
overturn the country's medicines act that was designed to
bring drug prices down. Now Novartis is up to it again and
is targeting India.

India produces affordable medicines that are vital to many
people living in developing countries. Over half the
medicines currently used for AIDS treatment in developing
countries come from India and such medicines are
used to treat over 80% of the 80,000 AIDS patients in
Medecins Sans Frontieres projects.

If Novartis is successful in its challenge against the
Indian government and its patent law, more medicines are
likely to be patented in India, making it very difficult
for generic producers to make affordable versions
of them. This could affect millions of people around the
world who depend on medicines produced in India.

Tell Novartis it has no business standing in the way of
people's right to access the medicines they need. Sign on
and urge Novartis to DROP THE CASE against the Indian
government.

To sign the petition, click here:
http://www.msf.org/petition_india/international.html