http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn11053
Legal wrangle puts India's generic drugs at risk
* 15:52 29 January 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* New Scientist staff and Reuters
Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss
pharmaceutical company Novartis succeeds in changing India's patent law, the
humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday.
Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India's patent law that, if
overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily
restricting the availability of affordable generic medicines, MSF says.
"If they hit India it basically cuts off the lifeline for generic medicines.
They're going for the jugular," MSF spokesman James Lorenz added.
India's generic drugs form the backbone of MSF's AIDS programmes, in which
80,000 people in 30 countries receive treatment.
"We are reaching a quarter of the people who need antiretroviral treatment in
sub-Saharan Africa," says Ivy Mwangi, an MSF doctor. "Rapid scale-up in
treatment is only possible with the availability and affordability of generic
drugs, most of which are produced in India."
Profit over life
In 2000, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment cost was estimated at $10,000 per
patient annually. But the availability of generic drugs produced mainly in
India, allowed costs to plummet to about $70 per patient per year, Mwangi adds.
India has long been an important source of affordable generic medicines as it
did not grant pharmaceutical patents until 2005, when it was forced to comply
with World Trade Organization rules on intellectual property (see India surveys
aftermath of new patent law).
"If Novartis gets through with its case our lives are at risk," Monique
Wanjala, a woman who has been living with HIV for 13 years, told a news
conference in Nairobi. "We want this case dropped," she said. "If we die
because affordable generic drugs aren't available, where will they sell the
drug? If profits are going to be put before peoples' lives then we have a
serious problem."
Novartis argues that the principle of intellectual property protection must be
safeguarded if innovation is to flourish.
MSF says spurious patents on "new" drugs of insignificant difference – like a
drug becoming a capsule rather than a pill and no longer requiring
refrigeration – are threatening lives in the developing world.
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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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