Access to life saving medicines is once more at the heart of trade negotiations between Thailand and the US. And again the US administration and businesses have chosen to bully the Thai government in advance of a meeting in Washington prior to the release of the that impacts on trade conditions between the US and its partners.
Compulsory licensing (CL) has been the casus beli of an ongoing battle started when the junta government led by Surayud Chulanont issued compulsory licences for antiretrovirals and anti-cancer drugs in September 2006 in …

Or the case of Thailand compulsory licensing vs. right wing pharmaceutical lobbyists
This article was written in May 2007, revised in June 2007 and minor edits were made on 17/11/08. I decided to republish it after my attention was drawn by the Wisdom of Whores to a recent opinion piece written by Roger Bate for the New York Times. In his latest article for the NYT, Bate conflates generic and counterfeit medicine finding another occasion to held high the flag of a sometimes unscrupulous pharmaceutical industry. The text below is a …

Abbott Laboratories Inc, one of the greediest and most despised Pharma in its league has agreed to pay between $10 million and $27.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by AIDS patients over the company’s 400 percent price hike of the HIV drug Norvir, the International Herald Tribune reports.
Back in late 2003, Abbott increased the price of Norvir’s average daily cost per patient five times to compensate for the smaller doses of Norvir needed when used as a booster rather than as a standalone drug.
Where do they get such idea at …

The Sunday Times reports that “The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves.” For example, Sutent, and anti cancer drug used to treat kidney cancer that extend patient’s lives by 6 months but cost £2,200 a month compared to the standard NHS drug that cost £800 a month is not available on the NHS. Likewise, Erbitux, costing about £3,000 a month but more potent …

In her book The Wisdom of Whores Elizabeth Pisani observes that “Funnily enough, it is often those [governments] that are secure in their popular majority (such as Thatcher in 1986) or those that don’t have to worry too much about voters (such as Iran and China) that can afford to be compassionate.” (p.254)

This against-the-flow statement has gained some weight this week when Public Health Minister Chaiya Sasomsab of the 2007 democratically elected Thai government announced that the the compulsory licences (CL) issued by the military government of Surayud Chulanont soon …