AIDS and the World Economic Forum
By Elijah Crane
The World Economic Forum says it is bringing together
leaders of 1,000 of the most powerful corporations in the world
at its meetings in New York. The group's Web site claims this
will be "the global summit which defines the political,
economic and business agenda for the year."
Merck and Pfizer Inc., two pharmaceutical giants and
manufacturers of HIV/AIDS medications, are among the many
transnational corporations and consultant firms that serve as
WEF "strategic" and "event" partners.
The death toll from AIDS may surpass that of the bubonic
plague, which claimed the lives of 40 million people in Asia
and Europe during the 14th century. (Family Health
International AIDS Institute)
Currently, 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in the
world. More than 25 million others have already perished. Every
day, 14,000 more people are infected; 2,000 are children under
the age of 15. Ninety-five percent of new infections are in
oppressed countries. (UNAIDS)
Merck was a participant last year in a vicious lawsuit
against the government of South Africa filed by 40 of the
largest pharmaceutical corporations.
These profiteers intended to prevent sub-Saharan countries
like South Africa from producing generic versions of the
life-saving HIV/AIDS drugs for which pharmaceutical
corporations hold patents.
An international movement fought this racist attack on the
oppressed nation and pushed back the vultures, who were forced
to withdraw their suit.
In an effort to counter mounting negative publicity, several
drug companies are offering discounted drugs to underdeveloped
countries where HIV/AIDS is most prevalent. This is really no
deal at all. Even if medication costs were reduced to $1 a day,
they would remain out of reach for those who need them
most.
This disingenuous price cut is in the pharmaceuticals'
self-interest. A recent pitch from Bristol-Myers Squibb and
GlaxoSmithKline--both among the plaintiffs in the
lawsuit--proposed to lower the prices of HIV/AIDS drugs for
China, contingent upon long-term patent protections. (Jan. 24
AsiaPort Daily News)
Their motivation is plainly to protect their profits.
The pharmaceutical corporations claim no responsibility for
the inaccessibility of their expensive medicines to
overwhelming numbers of workers and oppressed people around the
world living with HIV/AIDS. Instead, they blame the governments
of countries that have suffered centuries of oppression under
colonial rule for their inability to purchase and provide the
drugs.
The formerly colonized countries are not able to create
national HIV/AIDS service programs because years of extraction
of their rich resources have made them poor and the imperialist
powers extremely wealthy, leaving these super-exploited
countries in debt. Then the International Monetary Fund,
dominated by U.S. banks, demands they impose austerity measures
and forgo social programs in order to repay the exorbitant
debt.
Health care for people,
not for profit!
The IMF, World Bank and World Economic Forum are cut from
the same cloth. Corporate drug kings are an integral thread in
that capitalist fabric.
Health care for profit is part and parcel of the imperialist
penetration into markets around the globe. Any solutions to
social problems conceived by the profiteers will never meet the
needs of the world's people. They will never solve the
underlying crisis that has exacerbated the spread of the
devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic: poverty and oppression.
In fact, they ensure that the conditions for the disease
persist. Mass unemployment, homelessness and malnutrition
provide a breeding ground for the spread of illness. Without
access to health care, millions of poor and oppressed people
are condemned to infection, disease and death.
For women and lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, the added
oppression makes access to jobs, housing and health care more
difficult, increasing the conditions for disease and leaving
them more susceptible to HIV/AIDS.
Women make up almost 50 percent of the daily new infections
worldwide. Until 1993, there was not one woman-specific illness
on the CDC's list of opportunistic infections used to
differentiate between being HIV positive and having full-blown
AIDS. Women's symptoms still go largely unrecognized, and
studies on woman-to-woman transmission have yet to be
championed from on high.
Millions on every continent are suffering with HIV/AIDS,
which has become the fourth leading cause of death worldwide.
(UNAIDS)
As George W. Bush requests a $48 billion increase for the
Pentagon, he has cut the U.S. money allocated for the Global
Fund for AIDS, TB and malaria by $50 million.
Throughout the U.S., funding that was previously available
for HIV/AIDS services and prevention programs, meager as it
was, has been drastically cut. As a result, many agencies are
struggling to keep their doors open. Forced reductions of staff
lower the quality of care while increasing the caseload of
service providers.
Since Sept. 11, AIDS agencies in New York have faced drastic
funding cuts. As private and corporate foundation funding and
federal monies decrease, the financial burden for addressing
the pandemic increasingly shifts to workers and oppressed and
those infected/affected.
The tireless efforts of the AIDS movement forced the health
crisis into public view in the 1980s. The Reagan administration
refused even to utter the word "AIDS" for more than six years
into the epidemic. Reagan's hush was the impetus for the
popular slogan: Silence=Death.
This heroic movement has made many achievements throughout
more than two decades of battling the mega-corporations that
control the fate of millions. But how can the struggle against
this pandemic be won once and for all?
With life-saving HIV drugs in the hands of global
prescription drug lords and profiteers, HIV/AIDS activists are
compelled to fight for reforms like lower costs for medicines
and access to generic drugs. Even when those gains are won, the
vast majority of those in need cannot afford treatment, which
should be a human right.
The HIV/AIDS crisis will never be solved so long as
prescription drug lords and other capitalist criminals that
make up the WEF are determining the distribution of resources
in the world and ultimately the fate of the people.
In the hands of the workers and oppressed who have been most
affected, a health-care system would function to solve problems
like HIV/AIDS and not to generate super-profits. The treatment
needs of the population would be the first consideration in a
social system based on planned production to meet human
needs.
Reprinted from the Feb. 7, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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