The U.S. fights a losing battle when it seeks to stop New Core countries like Brazil from confronting a mounting AIDS crisis within their ranks. Joining WTO means you respect patents, but a medical emergency clause seems reasonable enough to me here. What Brazil does today, expect India, Russia, and China, three countries with even bigger crises, to do tomorrow.

June 23, 2005

Brazil's Right to Save Lives

Editorial, New York Times

Brazil has the best anti-AIDS program of any developing country. It has a model prevention effort and was the first poor country to provide free AIDS treatment to all who need it, a program countries around the world are now beginning to emulate.

It has been able to afford this because Brazilian labs make copycat versions of expensive brand-name drugs. Brazil can freely copy any drug commercialized before 1997, when the country began to respect patents on medicines, a requirement for joining the World Trade Organization. But newer AIDS medicines are still imported and are expensive, and Brazil is spending two-thirds of its antiretroviral budget on just three of these drugs.

The government is now contemplating measures that would allow Brazilian labs to copy these drugs. Brazil's health ministry has asked the manufacturers of the drugs to voluntarily license Brazil to make copies. They have refused, and Brazil is threatening to break the patents and pay the holders a reasonable royalty, as W.T.O. rules require . . .

Find the full at nytimes.com/2005/06/23/opinion/23thu3.html