Wikileaks: USA defends large pharmaceutical companies against generic drugs for poorer countries

Generic medicine in Spain

(Note: this article is a translation/summary of reports in Spanish media; we are not the only media to find difficulty in accessing the Wikileaks website, to use original quotations.) In 2003 the World Trade Organization allowed a country with a health crisis to manufacture or import a generic version of a drug otherwise protected by patents. Some Non Governmental Organizations saw this as a door opening onto what they have been asking for for many years. But the NGOs didn't count on diplomatic pressure by the USA on behalf of some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The most evident case was that of Guatemala. According to Wikileaks, on March 11, 2005, the US Ambassador to the WTO reported that>
he was very pleased with his efforts to persuade the country (one of the poorest in Latin America) to bring back the protection of those rights. "It is the end of a drama that has been going on for years, plagued with misinformation, conflicts of interests, partisan politicians and a lack of decision making by political leadership. It has taken us longer than any other subject over th last few months," says the ambassador proudly.

The Guatemalan story is an example of similar situations on almost all continents, and as such is worth looking at in some detail.

The most critical moment came in 2004 with the arrival of Óscar Berger to the Presidency of Guatemala. Berger found that his Social Security system was "rife with scandals amounting to millions of dollars." The new government "assumed that transnational pharmaceutical companies were conspiring with the directorship of that agency."

The Minister for Health, Marco Tulio Sosa, wanted to abolish a previous law with "the excuse that it restricts access to generic [medicine]." The situation is worsened [for US interests] when Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú supports the minister. Medecins sans Frontieres joins the fray by bringing an "expert" (the ambasador's quotation marks) from Argentina, Carlos Correa, who is fervently in favour of abolishing patents in certain countries.

After intense to-ing and fro-ing, the crisis reaches a climax in November. "Without warning," says a cable, "Menchu and Sosa appear in Congress with a new project to eliminate data protection laws, which was approved unanimously. Nobody dared oppose it in case they were identified as a tool of the multinationals."

The American representative goes into action, going straight to the President: "Insisting that the law be vetoed." In the end Berger tells the Ambassador that he "had been obliged to sign it into law, and did so on the 22nd despite the fact that the ambassador called him the day before [the signature]."

Other presures followed for some time, now under a new ambassador to the WTO, Peter Allgeier, who suggested that Guatemala might find itself outside the Central American Free Trade Agreement "maybe permanently."

The diplomat says that the President had been told that "multinationl companies had been working with corrupt officials and were manipulating the data protection conditions of the WTO's TRIPS (Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) treaty to prevent access to cheap generics." Berger was annoyed, but he had Rigoberta Menchú to contend with, whom "he couldn't allow himself to ignore."

Another cable mentions the start of a "public diplomacy Blitzkrieg" that includes finding "skeletons in Menchú's cupboard". It turns out that the Nobel winner "owns the franchise of Farmacias Similares, a Mexican company that sells the right to open offices with a $25,000 cash payment."

In the end, Guatemala revoked the law, the pharmaceuticals won and the poor of Guatemala lost.

There are times, however, when the USA does not get its way. In 2006 Thailand issued a decree that prevented an HIV medication made by Merck, Efavirenz, from using its patent. Alleging that Thai authorities beleived the price for the mdication was abusive, a cable from the WTO there reported that "they [Thailand] had probably obeyed their own laws and that of the WTO."

But that is not enough. Scapegoats are sought. Cables came and went with such comments as "The lack of consultation with Merck wekens the Ministry of Health's arguments and suggests that it is being very influenced by NGOs." Or "We do not belive that finance ministers are aware of the implications of the ecision, which we hope to remedy." Or "Merck plans to counterattck with a price drop and, with the help of the US Government, hopes to save its patent." The latter cable points out, too that although "the use of Efavirenz has increased rapidly because of an increase in the number of HIV patients and the Government's commitment in 2005 to provide antivirals to patients who ned them."

There is more, a lot more. In Thailand things got complicated [for the pharmaceutical company] with a coup d'etat in September of that year.High officials of the US Embasy are encouraged to speak directly to ministers, though "always in such a way as not to offend, saying that ther is no argument about Thailand being able to decree manufacture and distribution of patented medications." Another cable concludes that "Although present negotiations may save the Merck patents this time, this may not be possible in the future."

In January 2007, "the Ministry of Health announces its intention of enacting new patent-defying laws." These affect Abbott and Mylan Pharmacuticals. The cable goes on to say, "We fear that the Thai Government is about to break patent treaties because the medications are too expensive, not because this affects the poor."

In a surprising trn, "th Embasy requests any instructions about whether patents for medicines for non-pandemic diseases should be treated differently under WTO rulings." This time David beat Goliath.