By Maude Barlow
The following is an excerpt of a speech given by Maude Barlow to the Global Health Is a Human Right! conference held in May 2003 in Ottawa.
There are more than 32 million men, women and children infected with HIV/AIDS in developing countries; this year alone, a whole generation in some devastated countries will be wiped out. Only the lack of access to clean water comes anywhere close in comparison to this tragedy. Every 8 seconds a child dies of water-borne disease – a mind-numbing statistic of the same outrageous category.
The sad truth is that these deaths are preventable. With a concerted effort by an engaged and enraged international community, we could radically ease the suffering of millions on our way to eradicating AIDS forever. Why then, in spite of the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS and the establishment of both the Global Fund and an international action plan, as well as scores of international meetings, is the situation getting worse?
Unfortunately, our governments, including the Canadian government, say one thing and do another. While mouthing all the right pious platitudes, they have formed a global royalty surrounding and protecting a set of corporate interests historically unprecedented in their power. The suffering of millions is, for the global royalty, an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of this power and the ideology behind it.
Corporate-driven globalization has brought to the world a new form of colonialism and slavery—what Vandana Shiva calls global economic apartheid. It has created a form of war—against diversity, of big against small, of rich against poor, of technology against nature. These are wars of peacetime, occurring daily in the lives of billions, expressions of a system that puts profit above life, commerce above justice, and corporate power above community.
The basic antiretroviral drugs taken for granted in the West would keep millions alive and leading productive lives, but the price tag of U.S.$10,000–$15,000 a year is well above the annual income of most people in the Third World. Tragically, the answer – access to cheaper generic drugs – is opposed by one of the most powerful lobbies of all time.
The pharmaceutical industry is dominated by a handful of giants – Merck, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson – and they wield enormous clout. There was a time not long ago when these corporations were merely the size of nations. Now, after a frenzied three-year period of megamergers, they are behemoths that outweigh entire continents.
The drug companies operate like a cartel, seeking to exercise monopoly control. They were the key influence in inserting intellectual property rights in global and regional trade deals and are perhaps the best evidence that free trade is anything but. For these giants do not seek a competitive, open international drug market, but a closed and protected monopoly for their products.
They have the same kind of power base in Canada. Eight of the top ten drug companies in Canada are foreign-owned brand-name corporations. The Canadian lobby, Rx&D (formerly the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of Canada), was the key player behind the passage of Bill C-91, the NAFTA-compatible law that repealed Canada’s compulsory licensing system and extended monopoly protection to 20 years. As a result, Canadian drug prices soared – rising by 342 percent in just 15 years – as did the market share of patent drugs.
Firmly ensconced in a position of great influence, the patent drug companies in Canada call the shots. They are seeking the right to advertise drugs directly to consumers, as they do in the United States, and to protect their privileged position at the Health Protection Branch of Health Canada. They don’t want government to tamper with their “right” to keep a generic company in court for two years simply by alleging patent infringement. But their highest priority is to continue to block the export of Canadian generic drugs to the Third World.
So it is little wonder that Canada is supporting a TRIPS-plus regime at the upcoming FTAA negotiations, where the drug companies are seeking a patent extension to 25 years. Or that Canada is a cheerleader for GATS, exposing medicare to the cold shower of international competition in order to promote Canada’s fledgling health care industry abroad. Or that International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew backed off his promise not to extend NAFTA’s Chapter 11 investment provisions to the rest of the hemisphere the moment George W. Bush had a “word” with Jean Chrétien at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City three years ago.
The single most important action we civil society groups of the QUAD (WTO leadership) countries can do in this global struggle against HIV/AIDS is to fight our own governments and corporations and the policies and ideologies they are forcing on an increasingly divided world. This is global class warfare; it is clear which side the Canadian government has taken. Let us make it equally clear where our movement stands.
In that our governments no longer even attempt to appear fair, in that they listen only to the voice of their corporate elite, the only chance the world has for a system of real and sustained social justice is civil society – ordinary people. We are going to have to become what some commentators called “the other superpower,” referring to the massive street protests that gathered on the eve of the recent war. We must renew our fight against the WTO, the GATS and the FTAA – something we have let slide in recent years – and challenge the immoral power and monstrous greed of the patent drug transnationals.
The suffering of millions with AIDS is not inevitable; it is the natural consequence of a system based on winners and losers. A system that has lost its soul. A system that is destroying the planet in the name of economic freedom. Everything is for sale in their world – the fish before they are caught, the rain before it falls, the seed deep in the forest, the very building blocks of life. It cannot be sustained. Unlimited growth has the same DNA as the cancer cell. We will not stop the suffering of millions of AIDS-afflicted people until we confront corporate-driven, pro-privatization globalization. To confront this system is our greatest task.
Maude Barlow is the Volunteer National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians.
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