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When the Right Life Clashes With the Right to Property
By Claude Robinson
Much of the world is still trying to come to terms with the enormity of the news from London and Washington this week that scientists had competed the first draft of the DNA blueprint that makes us what we are. The breakthrough will open up almost unimaginable frontiers in science and medicine that could, conceivably, banish some dreaded diseases from human experience .
But while a part of the world anticipates the end of cancer and ponders the ethical implications of designer babies others are trying to figure out why three million children are still dying in developing countries each year from diseases that are preventable by readily available vaccines. They are also asking why most of the 30 million AIDS victims will die from the disease .
The search for answers to these and other related questions is taking place in the Working Group reviewing Commitment Six made at the first Social Summit in Copenhagen five years ago .
On the face of it, the commitment is straight forward enough. The 186 governments who made it in the Danish capital pledged to “promote and attain the goals of universal and equitable access to quality education, the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and the access of all to primary health care, making particular efforts to rectify inequalities relating to social conditions and without distinction as to race, national origin, gender, age or disability…”
According to John Longmore, Secretary General of the Summit delegates have agreed on what to do about primary education and decided that about $ 8 billion would be enough to assist those countries who still not delivering universal primary education because they do not have the money. Whether the money will actually be forthcoming is another story Up to Wednesday afternoon there was no agreement on how to deliver the commitment on health . Here there is a huge gap between what to do and how to do it gets a gap that is entangled in the ironic acronym, TRIPS, which stands for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights .
From the early stages of the negotiations back in New York, the Group of 77, (G-77) proposed that “in the case of medicines essential to public health” there be agreement to “make use” of TRIPS provisions “that allow circumvention, under certain circumstances of normal patent rights with respect to production, export and import, especially by low and middle-income countries.”
Here in Geneva, the G-77 softened the language somewhat saying that “intellectual property rights under the TRIPS Agreement should not take precedence over other human rights to the highest attainable standard of health care…nor the ethical responsibility to provide life saving medications at affordable cost to developing countries and people living in poverty.” The proposal was opposed by the US, Japan, Australia and Canada while the EU delegate proposed language that they hoped would accommodate G-77 concerns .
The EU would “acknowledge the importance of property rights” while recognising that there is enough flexibility in the TRIPS Agreement that allows exceptions on certain patents .
But according to sources familiar with the negotiations, the hardliners rejected the compromise. AIDS drugs is at the centre of the dispute. It has been established that drugs now available have resulted in significant decrease in AIDS deaths in the US .
But in Africa, where most of the worlds AIDS victims live and die, these drugs are unaffordable and countries like South Africa are able to manufacture them but cannot do so without the permission of the rights holders a permission unlikely to be granted .
Not surprisingly, the attitudes displayed in the negotiations brought a sharp reaction of the South African delegate who said that unlike some his western colleagues he could not afford to be “blase” about the issue as his country was about to lose a quarter of its work force to HIV/AIDS. The issues are complex. The west argue that respecting intellectual property rights is essential to assuring expenditures in research and development and that big drug are assured of returns on their investments .
The WHO, according to its Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland is clear on the issue of intellectual property rights. “ They must be protected. We depend on them to stimulate innovation.” So how do we get the drugs from the North, where they are produced for profit, to the South where the disease lives? Various initiatives now on the table or at different stages of implementation, would encourage the drug companies to provide drugs at prices subsidised mainly by taxpayers in the North. But developing countries say it would still put the price beyond their reach .
If the distribution of influence in the world is a guide then it is unlikely that the position of the G-77 will still be on the table when the Special Session ends Friday .
Perhaps when shareholders of the big drug companies start reaping profits from those who can afford the new products and treatments promised by the human gnome project perhaps the rights for vaccines for diseases of poverty will become freely available. Or perhaps not.
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Has the world lived up to its 1996 commitments..?
Solidarity 2000 starting 17th of June!
MS's big summer event Solidarity 2000 will start very soon now, with a week-long variety of debates and arrangements. The activities range from encounters between young people from Balkan, Africa and Central America to big conferences on the planet's social development and environment.
Judge by yourself:
The 1996 Copenhagen Social Summit final report in English, French and Spanish.