NY Times, March 12, 2001 Yale Pressed to Help Cut Drug Costs in Africa By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. PARIS, March 11 - Trying a new tack to drive down the price of AIDS medicines, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders has asked Yale University to permit South Africa to import a generic version of a drug on which Yale holds the patent. The university, citing a patent contract with Bristol-Myers Squibb, has refused. But the Yale press office released a brief statement on Friday saying Yale had removed all barriers to Bristol-Myers in making the drug readily available in South Africa and hoped it would do so. A group of Yale law students, distressed that their university looks complicit in keeping the drug out of reach of thousands of dying South Africans while getting $40 million a year in license fees, have been planning to pressure Yale. A Bristol-Myers spokesman said the company was planning action because of the Yale protest, but declined to describe it. The drug in question is d4T, an antiretroviral drug also known as stavudine or by the brand name Zerit. It was one of the first components of the triple-therapy AIDS cocktail that has done much toward bringing the disease largely under control in the United States. Last year physicians at a Doctors Without Borders clinic in Khayelitsha Township, outside Cape Town, began asking holders of patents on AIDS drugs to give South Africa the right to make them or to import generic versions. The doctors say 50,000 township residents are H.I.V.-positive, and not one can afford antiretroviral therapy at prices that reflect those in the United States and Europe, $10,000 to $15,000 a year. Cipla Ltd., an Indian company that makes generic drugs, has offered to sell the medical group a triple-therapy cocktail, including d4T, for $350 a year per patient. It is offering d4T itself at 5 cents a tablet, while Bristol-Myers charges $2.23. But Cipla's offer cannot be accepted legally in South Africa because the drug is under patent to Yale and Bristol- Myers. Cipla, working with Doctors Without Borders, asked South Africa on Wednesday to give it the licenses on all antiretroviral drugs patented there by the multinationals on the ground that they are not selling them at affordable prices. According to an article in The Yale Daily News, which broke the story, d4T was discovered by a pharmacology professor, William Prusoff, in the early 1990's and shortly afterward licensed to Bristol-Myers. Last December, Doctors Without Borders wrote to the South African division of Bristol-Myers Squibb, asking for permission to import generic forms of two of the company's drugs, didanosine, known as ddI, and d4T. The group was told that the company had not patented ddI in South Africa, and that Yale owned the patent on d4T and had licensed it to Bristol-Myers. "It is the policy of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company to rely upon its patents to protect its interests," concluded the letter, from I. J. Strachan, chief executive officer. Toby Kasper, who runs the South African campaign of Doctors Without Borders for cheaper drugs, said the group concluded that it could probably import generic ddI without legal difficulties but should approach Yale about d4T. Yale's response came on Feb. 28 from Jon Soderstrom, managing director of the Yale Office of Cooperative Research, which handles the licensing of inventions by Yale professors. "Although Yale is indeed the patent holder," he wrote, "Yale has granted an exclusive license to Bristol-Myers Squibb, under the terms of which only that entity may respond to a request." Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/12/health/12MEDI.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
