'Medications for every nation'
Pills cost pennies, greed costs lives
By Key
Martin
Washington
Chanting "Medications for every nation" to a musical hip hop
beat, a group of AIDS activists lay down in the street here
Oct. 6. Hundreds more shouted encouragement to them when the
protesters were carried off by police.
The action took place in 17th Street between the office of
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshevsky and the Old
Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex.
High-level officials looked on worriedly, as similar protests
are expected in Seattle at the November meeting of the World
Trade Organization.
Asia Russell of Philadelphia Act-Up explained the reason for
the action. "Inside this office the U.S. trade representative
is making trade policy for the world. It's a policy of
punishment of poor nations that are struggling to get access to
life-saving medications for their sick and dying people, for
the hundreds of millions with AIDS, malaria and
multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis."
Scott Nova of the Citizens Trade Campaign said, "Here we
have the spectacle of an administration that presents itself as
a paragon of human values but is willing to consign millions to
an untimely death for the sake of drug company profit margins.
The good news is that this contemptible trade policy is
generating an ocean of opposition."
"The implications of all this break my heart," said
Chatinkha Nkhoma in a voice that brought the audience to tears.
Nkhoma is an AIDS activist from Malawi who has testified to an
uninterested U.S. Congress. "It speaks of a climate where there
is no value to life. If our deaths can save a buck or two,
that's okay with them. It speaks of a climate of overt
international institutional racism and structural violence.
"AIDS is actually wiping out large populations of people,"
she said. "The rate is so alarming and the only thing that is
stopping us from getting help is profits. Disgusting!
"We want trade policies to reflect the immediate and urgent
crisis, the AIDS epidemic. International policies geared to
profit are evil and genocidal. These international trade
policies are the ones that have created unimaginable poverty in
Africa.
"When AIDS came to Africa people had no means of defending
themselves. AIDS found a home in Africa created by national and
international policies brought by governments and lending
bodies that have continued to give AIDS a hand."
Comparison to `Tuskeegee experiment'
Jose DiMarco, an HIV-positive AIDS activist from
Philadelphia Act-Up, said, "Some years ago here in the United
States life-saving medications were deliberately withheld from
people with a debilitating illness. Many of these people died
or suffered physical infirmities. These victims of the U.S.
government were poor and Black people. After most had died, the
president apologized for the `Tuskeegee experiment.'
"At the opening of the new millennium the U.S. government is
withholding medicine from sick and poor people again."
Shouts of "Shame, shame" welled up from the crowd. "I'm
talking about Clinton's cabinet-level official, that represents
the policy of the U.S. to the whole world. Charlene Barshevsky
is the U.S. trade representative for the Clinton and Gore
administration and she is deliberately withholding medication
from sick and dying people. This is her Tuskegee 2000.
"In Zambia the government has been forced to open morgues 24
hours a day just to hold the corpses. Who is going to apologize
to the millions dead from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis,"
DiMarco continued. "It's hard to offer an apology when your
mouth is full of money."
Protest planned for Seattle WTO meeting
The underlying issue is that poor countries use what are
called parallel imports and compulsory licensing to produce
generic versions of medicines, or bulk-buy them at the cheapest
prices. It is not a violation of World Trade Organization
rules.
However, the drug giants and U.S. government are positioning
themselves to change this at the upcoming Seattle WTO meeting.
People from around the world will be coming to protest.
Thailand has a million HIV-positive people, many of them
women. When it tried to make its own medications, "Barshevsky
came knocking on the door and said, if you do this the U.S.
will not take your exports any more," Russell explained. She
said the U.S. would "collapse your economy by refusing to take
your exports, instead of you being allowed to save your
citizens with AIDS."
Barshevsky is the multi-billion-dollar drug industry's hired
gun, said Russell.
"The fact of the matter is that most of these pills cost
pennies to make, and most were heavily funded by taxpayer
dollars. The dirty little secret is if countries like Thailand
or Brazil or Zimbabwe start making their own versions cheaply,
that would undercut the drug companies' ability to rip off
consumers in first-world countries like the U.S."
"We are sick and tired of burying and mourning our dead,"
Nkhoma concluded. "Our morgues and our cemeteries are filled.
Our families and communities are broken. We have no more tears
to cry."
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