AFRICA AND AIDS
Tracking the real Al Gore
By Key
Martin
U.S. Vice President Al Gore tried to take the media
spotlight at the UN on Jan. 10 by announcing a small allocation
of funds to combat AIDS in Africa. Yet a headline in a recent
issue of the South African Observer reports connections between
members of the Clinton-Gore administration and the big drug
companies that have sabotaged this fight.
The deadly policies of Western drug companies that price
treatments out of the range of poor communities is rapidly
turning the AIDS crisis in Africa into a major crime against
humanity. Some 32 million HIV-positive people in Africa face
death from the dreaded illness.
Thirteen million of the estimated 16 million worldwide who
have already died from AIDS were in Africa, according to the
United Nations. Over 10 million orphans have been left in their
wake.
The Observer says that AIDS "is an apocalypse, the holocaust
plague of the next century. What has remained hidden until now,
however, are the lengths to which pharmaceutical companies and
their political allies seem prepared to go in refusing to
confront and treat this pandemic, until their ability to ensure
vast profits is guaranteed."
The article exposes the chain of U.S. government and
corporate connections. It expresses the growing anger in Africa
at how Washington and the drug companies prevent treatment for
HIV and HIV-related illnesses by refusing to mass-produce
life-saving and life-prolonging medications for the poor. These
monopolies don't want to undermine the high prices they charge
in the U.S. and Europe.
And they look to none other than the U.S. vice president to
represent drug company interests.
The Observer focuses on Clinton's White House Chief of Staff
John Podesta. Its articles reveal that Podesta's brother,
Anthony Podesta, is the "point-man in Washington for the most
powerful lobby in town, that of the pharmaceutical barons."
Pharma--the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of
America--is an "alliance of the nation's 100 biggest drug
companies." They labeled as "piracy" a new South African law
legalizing generic medications and the use of "parallel
importing"--taking advantage of discounts given other
countries. Yet these practices are legal under WTO regulations
and used by the United States all the time.
Pharma hired the heavily Democratic-connected Podesta.Com,
formerly known as Podesta Associates, to launch an offensive
against the South African government. Podesta.Com took former
president Nelson Mandela personally into South African court,
had U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshevsky take economic
sanctions measures against South African exports, and
threatened even more dire actions unless South Africa ditched
the law.
Pharma lined up Gore
Pharma lined up Gore to personally threaten both the
government and Mandela on the issue, thereby bringing in
millions in presidential campaign contributions from the drug
industry. Gore represented the U.S. in a "BiNational Committee"
that was supposed to discuss resolution of economic issues
between the two countries.
The South African government refused to back down and AIDS
activists in the U.S. turned Gore's campaign into a shambles by
injecting protests into his appearances everywhere he went.
Under this resistance the U.S. backed down hours before the
new South African president, Thabo Mbeki, arrived at the UN to
speak last September. Protests by ACT-UP continued at
Barshevsky's office opposite the White House/Executive Office
Building complex on Washington's 17th Street. The demonstrators
blocked streets and chained themselves to her desk and
balcony.
While the U.S. has made concessions on a "policy" level, no
additional medications have been made available to Africa's
poor, who are still burying their children at record rates.
At an October protest of a Gore rally, ACT-UP member Joyce
Hamilton said, "We forced Gore to do the right thing on access
to essential drugs in South Africa, but U.S. trade policy on
medication access is still deadly despite reform."
Gore's announcement of resources to fight HIV and AIDS in
Africa amounts to less than 1/20th of 1 percent of what the
drug companies want to charge for medications--$100 million
versus $230 billion. The fund is only a fig-leaf to repair his
nasty image after Gore led the charge against Africa last
year.
The chants of the AIDS activists, "Pills cost pennies, greed
costs lives," should greet these drug companies and their
political hirelings everywhere they go.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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