Case Study 2 - The WTO and AIDS: A Timeline
After a decade of hopelessness, people in North America who are infected with HIV begin to turn their lives around, thanks to the discovery of antiretroviral (ARV) medication, which allows infected people to live normal lives. In Southern countries, where populations are becoming infected at alarming rates, governments are unable to buy large quantities of the medication because it costs $10,000 per person per year. In Brazil, the government spends money researching the make-up of the ARV drugs so that it can manufacture the medicine locally instead of buying it from international drug companies.
When the Brazilian Government begins producing generic ARVs in 1997, medicine prices fall 82% and the cost of AIDS therapy drops from $10,000 to $300 a year. Brazil prepares to manufacture more ARV drugs, which it will sell at low cost to other developing countries. It seems that AIDS medication may become accessible worldwide.
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The World Trade Organization (WTO) has a hearing to decide whether Brazil's production of imitation AIDS drugs follows international trade rules. According to WTO Intellectual Property rules, a company who develops a drug receives twenty years of patent protection. During this time no one else can copy the drug. In this WTO case, US- based pharmaceutical companies try to stop the Brazilian government from reproducing drugs that they have invented. The drug companies argue that they will not be able to research and develop other life saving drugs if countries like Brazil are able to copy their medicines. The WTO case threatens Brazil's efforts to fight HIV. In the media, critics argue that WTO patent rules will stop millions of people from getting treated.
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Two years after WTO meetings in Seattle, which were attended by over 50 000 protestors, another WTO meeting is held in the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar. Here, political demonstrations are prohibited by the government. At the end of the meeting a WTO declaration says that trade rules should not prevent countries from producing medicines that will protect public health. A key point remains unresolved: whether countries like Brazil will be allowed to export their life-saving medicines to other poor countries that do not have the capacity to produce the drugs themselves. The WTO wins support for its ruling on health, but critics say that it continues to favour wealthy countries while doing little to help poor nations.
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