Idolatry alive and well #2

Remember my post "Idolatry alive and well, " where I focused on Larry Summer's justification for dumping polluting industries in the poorest parts of the globe? LHG is toying with the idea of arguing that Summers' line of reasoning isn't an aberration - it's actually how the world works. What the hell, I'll say it - the institutions that govern the world operate according to that idolatrous logic. Here's an example - the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement the World Trade Organization (WTO). I know it sounds dry, but bear with me.

TRIPS has to do with patents and the stakes are most visible when dealing with the pharmaceutical industry. Here's an example: In 2002, the World Health Organization estimated that six million people with HIV/AIDS would clinically qualify for antiretroviral therapy. In the same year, however, only an estimated 60,000 were actually receiving therapy. TRIPS, the pharmaceutical industry, and the governments of the wealthy nations act together to ensure that only those who can pay the price of drugs are able to live with AIDS.

In South Africa, AIDS is a pandemic: the South African economy is predicted to be 17 per cent smaller in ten years than it would be without AIDS. By 2010, there are expected to be 2 million AIDS orphans in South Africa. To deal with the crisis the South African government passed the Medicine Act in 1996, which tried to make essential medicines more accesible through, for example, compulsory licensing. (In compulsory licensing you break the patent and produce the drug yourself at far lower cost. AIDS therapy that costs $15,000 a yr in the US costs only $4000 or less in Brazil).

In response, the United States government argued that the Medicine Act violated TRIPS, imposed trade sanctions and placed South Africa on the “301 Watch List” of countries under scrutiny for their trading practices. Only intense activist pressure on Al Gore, who was then campaigning for President, led the US government to back down. Nevertheless, thirty nine multinational drug companies filed lawsuits against President Mandela in 1998 further tying up the law in South African courts.

In 2001, on the other hand, Canada overrode Bayer’s patent for the anthrax treating drug Cipro. Health Canada stated: “Canadians expect and demand that their government will take all steps necessary to protect their health and safety.” Unlike AIDS in South Africa, however, Canada had yet to face a single diagnosed case of Anthrax. The United States followed suit by threatening to buy generic substitutes, asserting the very same rights denied to countries crippled by AIDS.

In this model, medicine is only for those who can pay, and is judged as valuable insofar as it can be paid for by the wealthy. James Orbinski, international president of Doctors Without Borders, summed it up: “He who can’t pay, dies.”

Sounds like Summers's logic to me...