Big Pharma and "free" trade
I recently came across the excellent four-year-old Salon.com article by Adam Graham-Silverman ("Big Pharma's Free Ride", 8/12/05) that details the way in which large drug companies managed to use the CAFTA trade agreement between the US and certain Central American companies) to wipe out competition in struggling economies.
The Free Trade agreement may have opened some US markets to Central American goods, but for drug companies it was a field day. As the article notes, CAFTA "requires its members to adopt strict rules on intellectual property rights, including those protecting prescription drugs. These drugs cost up to 22 times what Doctors Without Borders, which runs several AIDS clinics in Guatemala, pays for generic equivalents."
The agreement also greatly extends patents for prescription medicines far beyond what is allowed in the US. "Drug companies get 20-year patent protection for their drugs from the moment they begin research and development, but they can apply to extend that time period."
And it's not just countries like Guatemala and Nicaragua who are suffering. The phenomenon has a chance of boomeranging back to the US, where the drug companies have, by hook and by crook, desperately trying to tie up their drug in nearly perpetual patents:
As the article notes: "The United States has limits on patent extensions and on how long companies can keep secret their test data. But if the United States' neighbors adopt different requirements, like those in CAFTA, pressure will build at home to "harmonize," or get on board with what everyone else is doing. 'People are starting to realize, yes, indeed, this is a part of grand strategy,' said Kathleen Jaeger, president of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association."
One of the most typical activities of oligopolies is making sure that government actions accomplish for them what they can't gain by competing in the "open market" that they and their protectors give such lip service to. It is so much cheaper to alter a law or a treaty through lobbying and political action than by actually coming up with a new drug, a new idea, or a new product line. Free Trade is freer for some than others.
9:10:08 PM 
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