U.S, WTO threaten Brazil medicine

The U.S. has filed a complaint with the WTO on behalf of giant drug companies, claiming that Brazil is illegally creating and distributing AIDS drugs. The complaint says that Brazil should not be allowed to create these drugs without paying the U.S. drug companies a licensing fee.

Brazil can create the drugs at a very low cost and after distributing the drugs, deaths from AIDS in Brazil dropped from approximately 11,000 to 4,136 in one year. The drugs are widely distributed to those with AIDS through government and religious medical programs. The Brazilian government pays the cost in an effort to control the epidemic.

Now the U.S. drug companies threaten this progress because they say they are not getting their cut. In 1997, Brazil passed a law to honor international patents. The U.S. drug companies claim they patented the drugs the Brazilians are using prior to 1997. Does Brazil have to honor patents created before 1997? Does a drug company have the right to take life-saving medicine out of the hands of doctors and nurses? It seems the decision is in the hands of the World Trade Organization for dispute resolution...

Brazil has been distributing these life-saving drugs for free to the Brazilian people. Reports show that Brazilians are taking the medications regularly and the giant drop in the mortality rate indicates that the government's program is working. This is a model that other countries could be using to prevent the spread of AIDS and other disesases.

Other countries that produce and distribute low-cost AIDS drugs are also threatened. The drug companies are going after South Africa next, and are currently filing suit with the WTO against the South African government claiming similar patent infringement. In all, the U.S. government has threatened trade sanctions against over 30 countries, including India, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, Argentina and Brazil, at the request of the drug firms.

Ofxam, an organization which provides food and medicine to poor people around the world is active in the protest against these life-threatening trade sanctions. Ofxam has asked GlaxoSmithKline to drop its suit against South Africa, which will begin on March 5th. Visit the Ofxam website, contact GlaxoSmithKline, contact the WTO, write your congressperson and express yourself if you feel that emergency medical treatment to stop an epidemic supersedes the WTO's enforcement of drug company patents. The alternative is increased mortality in the countries threatened.

The correct figure is a drop in deaths over four years of the program from 11,000 a year to 4,136 last year, not over one year as I stated.

Where did you get your sources for this information? I'd like to see the study that showed a decrease in death rates due to people taking AIDS drugs. Another important mistake in your report states that giving out AIDS drugs could prevent AIDS. AIDS drugs have never been shown to prevent AIDS. In fact, what doctors and researchers are saying now is that since protease inhibitors have been introduced, there has been a rise in the spread of AIDS viruses that are resistant to all AIDS drug treatments. Also, what is it people are dying from without the AIDS drugs in Brazil? In Africa, the definition of AIDS is quite different from the one in the US. It includes symptoms of illnesses that many African people get due to grossly underfunded public health care systems as a result of structural readjustment programs -- diarrhea, fever, etc. Most Africans diagnosed with "AIDS" have never been tested for HIV, but are diagnosed based on common illnesses there. Although I don't know as much about the situation in Brazil, I would suspect something similar is going on there. One need only look in the Physicians Desk Reference, or on the web sites for specific AIDS drugs to see that the side-effects they cause are identical to what the U.S. government call the opportunistic infections of AIDS. The list of opportunistic infections has changed with the addition of new AIDS drugs to the market, adding new side-effects from the drugs to the list of opportunistic infections.

Greedy pharmaceutical companies are trying to increase their profits by controlling production and distribution of AIDS drugs. They have bought out most formerly community-run AIDS organizations in the U.S. Project Inform gets nearly 50% of its funding from pharmaceutical companies. The drugs they promote the most directly correlates to the amount of money the pharmaceutical companies that make them donated. They promote the "good" effects of drugs, while downplaying or neglecting to mention at all, the potentially deadly side-effects of AIDS drugs. When they are mentioned, they are called opportunistic infections, even though they are clearly listed as drug side-effects in medical literature.

We need to be working to end structural readjustment programs that take away money from public health programs, rather than becoming lobbyists for the greedy and deadly pharmaceutical industry!

I understand you may not believe that people die from AIDS. All I'm saying is that people in Brazil, diagnosed with AIDS, were dying at a rate of 11,000 per year, four years ago. Now people diagnosed with AIDS are dying at a rate of 4,000 per year. The difference: Brazil gave away free AIDS drugs: protease inhibitors, etc. I don't work for pharmaceutical companies, nor do I have money invested in them. The statistics come from the Brazilian government and have been reported in the NY Times, etc. Maybe you don't believe in AIDS, that's your business. But you take the side of the pharmaceutical companies if you say Brazil should pay the companies to produce cheap generic copies of these drugs which Americans (and you may think it is a mistake) pay $15,000 a year to take. Sure the Brazilian govt. is supporting pharmaceutical production in their own country, but does that make them criminals? They are trying to stop an epidemic. You don't believe in the epidemic. Then stop buying chemical products, stop buying pesticide laden food, and artificial fabric clothing! If chemicals in the environment cause AIDS-like symptoms, you do something about it!

see www.genericsnow.org for more information

Can someone please direct me to the study that shows that HIV causes AIDS? I have done research for school, and could only find that Dr. Robert Gallo held a press conference saying he presumes it to be the cause of AIDS, but no studies were done to prove it. Also, I found an interview with Dr. Luc Montangier, the co-discoverer of the HIV virus, that said he no longer believes HIV to be the cause of AIDS. What is going on here with the AIDS issue?

First of all, I need to refute what P2 accuses me of saying. I never said that chemicals in the environment cause AIDS-like symptoms. As someone with chemical and environmental allergies, I already don't buy chemical products, pesticide laden food, and artificial fabric clothing. To do so would be a death sentence to me. However, that has nothing to do with the AIDS issue, and I have no idea how you made that conclusion from what I said?!?!

Secondly, I do not support any pharmaceutical industry scam, especially the one to withhold drugs from countries with less money in order to try to force them to pay as much as possible for their drugs. Any country should have a right to produce any pharmaceutical drug needed without having to deal with greedy pharmaceutical companies. However, AIDS drug costs take away from the ability to get treatments for opportunistic infections, which are the real killers.

Thirdly, I do believe that people are dying of things called opportunistic infections, which are reaching epidemic levels in many areas. However, opportunistic infections differ from country to country, and in many countries opportunistic infections are the same as things people have been dying from all along, only they are re-named opportunistic infections when someone is HIV+, or just presumed to be HIV+ because HIV tests are too costly.

People don't die from AIDS. They die from opportunistic infections. If someone has lymphoma or TB and die, they die of lymphoma or TB. If someone has lymphoma or TB and is HIV+ and dies, the cause of death is still lymphoma or TB, but is stated on death certificates to be caused by HIV. In any case, people who have deadly illnesses, or when HIV+, deadly opportunistic infections, need treatments for the illnesses that will kill them. With structural adjustment programs, countries have had money taken away from health programs. Pharmaceutical companies are trying to force other countries to buy their drugs at outrageous prices, or else countries have to produce the drugs themselves, for less money, but still at considerable cost. When that happens, it means less money to treat deadly opportunistic infections that HIV+ AND HIV- people are susceptible to.

What good are AIDS drugs when they have never been able to prevent opportunistic infections? In fact, opportunistic infections are intracellular, and people are susceptible to them when the intracellular arm of their immune system is weakened. Studies of AIDS drugs examining the effects on the intracellular arm of the immune system have shown them to WEAKEN it, thus making people MORE vulnerable to opportunistic infections. That's why the opportunistic infections of AIDS are identical to the side-effects of AIDS drugs. What sense does it make to take drugs that cause the very things one is trying to prevent?

Shouldn't people have access to treatments for the deadly opportunistic infections that both HIV+ and HIV- people get to prevent needless deaths?

Protease inhibitors were put out on the market with only 3 months of research in humans, thanks to changes in U.S. laws after pharmaceutical industry lobbying. For the first few months of taking them, they cause an immune system reaction that makes people feel healthier. Wait a little longer, though, and the drugs start causing heart attacks, liver failure, lymphoma, diabetes, anemia, wasting syndrome, kidney stones, strokes, and lipodystrophy, to name a few. Of course, the media barely ever touches on this subject, or on the fact that only about 1/3 of people who try AIDS drugs are able to stay on them because the side-effects are too toxic to tolerate.

For more information, including medical studies, and lots more inconsistencies with the HIV=AIDS hypothesis, visit these non-pharmaceutical funded and non-corporate funded sites:

www.virusmyth.net

www.aidsrealitycheck.org

www.actupsf.com

www.aidsmyth.com

http://nav.webring.yahoo.com/hub?ring=aidsdissident&id=10&hub for a web ring listing several sites on the subject

I heard about 10 hours of Gary Null talking about the problems and irregularities with the HIV/AIDS hypothesis right here in LA over the past two weeks! He talks about all the things People Before Profits brings up and more.

Although Gary Null is based out of New York Pacifica affiliate WBAI, you can here him in Los Angeles on KPFK, 90.7 FM. He's on the Something's Happening Show on Tuesday Nights/Wednesday AM, midnight to 6 am. If you're asleep, you can program your VCR to tape on a 6 hour VCR tape at that time. You take an audio cord and run it from the headphone jack in your stereo (you may need an adaptor) to the audio input jack in your VCR. Keep your stereo on to KPFK, set the VCR to tape any channel, and then you can have the whole 6 hour show taped for playback on your VCR.

You can also go to Gary Null's web page at www.garynull.com.