Corporate
lobbyists have an undue influence on the global battles
against AIDS and poverty, says a new report by
ActionAid International. The report, titled
"Under the Influence," says that a worldwide
explosion of corporate lobbying is contributing to
unfair trade rules that may cost lives. In 2004 the
U.S. pharmaceutical industry alone spent over $1
billion on lobbying, according to the report.
The report cites
examples of the results of this spending, which includes
privileged corporate access to and excessive influence over
the World Trade Organization policy-making process to
help drugmakers safeguard their profits, even on drugs
needed to fight pandemics like HIV, malaria, and
tuberculosis.
According to the
report, senior officials from Pfizer, the world's
largest drug company, in 2003 negotiated directly with the
WTO's director-general and its member states to
block a proposal that would allow poor countries to
import cheaper copies of patented drugs during health
emergencies. Drug industry lobbying at the WTO brought about
a rule change last year ensuring that countries such
as Brazil, India, and Thailand will find it much
harder to make cheaper copies of patented medicines,
ActionAid says. In 2005, PhRMA, the U.S. drug industry
lobbying group whose members include Pfizer and Merck,
lobbied the Indian government to bring in a new law
that threatens to deny HIV treatment for up to 350,000
people who depend on low-cost Indian drugs worldwide,
according to the report.
"Public
health officials and donor governments have real
humanitarian and strategic goals to achieve when it
comes to fighting HIV/AIDS and other diseases of
poverty in developing countries, but what we see instead are
a few powerful private companies using patent law and their
own easy access to official trade negotiators to
undermine such long-term public goals in favor of the
short-term financial interests of their stock prices
and quarterly dividends to shareholders," says Rick
Rowden, senior policy analyst for ActionAid, in a
press statement. "At what point will citizens
say 'enough is enough' and begin demanding
that such private sector actors be regulated
effectively so that their prerogatives can no longer
undermine the effectiveness of our long-term public health
policies?" (Advocate.com)