  
AIDS advocacy group lodges papers against drug firms
Last Updated: 2001-04-11 14:08:00 EDT (Reuters Health)
By Steven Swindells
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A leading South African AIDS advocacy group filed court papers against the world's most powerful drug firms on Wednesday, charging them with failing to act in the face of the country's AIDS crisis.
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) lodged its 800-page affidavit ahead of the resumption of a landmark case at the Pretoria high court on April 18 that will pit 39 of the world's biggest drugs firms against the South African government.
The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa (PMA) is seeking to strike down South African legislation that it argues would violate its highly cherished patent rights on medicines, including AIDS drugs.
TAC national secretary Mark Heywood said their legal team will argue that the South African government was within its rights to import generic drugs under international trade laws, including the TRIPS agreement which covers patents. The affidavit also attempts to dismiss arguments by drug firms that they have offered a series of price discounts on their anti-AIDS drugs which Pretoria has failed to take up.
"Drug firms want South Africa to be a beggar. The offers are conditional and only made under public pressure and could be just as easily taken away," Heywood told Reuters. "South Africa cannot give away its rights to compulsory license and parallel import on these offers," Heywood said.
PMA's position that patents were vital to fund drug research were countered by TAC which said that drug firms got tax breaks for their research from public coffers and that key compounds in patented drugs were discovered by publicly funded scientists. AIDS activists and aid organisations have slammed the drug firms for putting profits ahead of lives by earning excessive profits from their patented medicines.
The PMA will argue in court that the act will give the health minister unfettered power to import generic versions of medicines in violation of their patent rights. PMA's legal team is also expected to argue that the South African government has failed to take up a series of offers on discounted AIDS drugs because it still has doubts over the safety and ethics of the distribution of antiretroviral drugs.
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