World AIDS Day targets greed of U.S. drug giants
On Dec. 1, protesters in cities around the world marked
World AIDS Day by targeting U.S. pharmaceuticals companies and
the global push toward "free trade" as culprits in the
spiraling AIDS pandemic. Demonstrators particularly focused on
the World Trade Organization, joining those besieging the trade
negotiators in Seattle and marching in solidarity
elsewhere.
People took to the streets in Johannesburg and Cape Town,
South Africa; Paris, London, New York, San Francisco,
Washington and other cities. Everywhere their message was the
same: Health care is a human right, and should not be a
commodity sold for profit.
Jaime Balboa of the International Gay and Lesbian Human
Rights Commission said of both the Clinton/Gore administration
and the WTO: "They have prioritized pharmaceutical lobbyists'
concerns over public health. ... The United Nations' most
recent statistics indicate that 50 million people now have
HIV/AIDS. We must put saving lives before corporate
profits."
Ninety percent of people with HIV and AIDS live in Africa,
Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. According to Balboa, big
pharmaceuticals concerns have used the Clinton administration,
the WTO and any other tool to block oppressed countries from
access to lower-priced HIV medicines.
"The U.S. has also bypassed the WTO, when necessary, and
exerted bilateral pressure on countries like South Africa and
Thailand to keep the life-saving medicine more expensive,"
Balboa said.
In New York, AIDS activists had reacted angrily when the NBC
television network scheduled its annual Rockefeller Center
Christmas Tree lighting for Dec. 1. They charged NBC executives
with callousness in choosing to indulge in glitzy hoopla on a
day that should be set aside to honor those struggling with
HIV/AIDS. New York's World AIDS Day action targeted NBC.
--Shelley Ettinger
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