FOCUS ON AFRICA
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=37&page=1

"Advocates of drug access say that Uganda has allowed its patent legal review process to be commandeered by the United States Agency for International Development (USaid) ... The NGO coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS) has continuously pointed out that the involvement of USaid in writing Ugandan patent laws means that it will reflect US corporate interests."

Much was made of Bush's billions to fight Aids in Africa, but when the world's stingiest aid donor comes bearing gifts, you better look out!

There are remarkable parallels between items 1 & 3 on the US, Aids and Africa, and item 2, a rerun of African biosafety lawyer Mariam Mayet's brilliant expose of how the US and the biotech corporations are working to profit from hunger in Africa.

As Mariam shows, areas like agricultural research, technical assistance, food aid, and the funding of biosafety initiatives, have all been drawn into the frame, with the Bush administration channelling big money to agencies like USAID and USDA to promote projects to "integrate biotechnology into local food systems and spread the technology through regions in Africa," as USAID's remit explicitly states.

Mariam's native South Africa has come to play a pivotal role in this industry-US marketing campaign which is aimed at removing potential regulatory hurdles and trade restrictions. This is because SA's introduction of GM crops has been so rapid - certainly amongst the most rapid anywhere outside of the US itself. The aim is to take the biosafety system that permitted this and make it the model for the rest of Africa.

What is so depressing about this is that while GM crops introduce novel risks and unertainties - ones that are particularly challenging for African countries to face - the benefits from GM, as Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies has so convincingly shown, are much lower than can be obtained with alternatives for just a tiny fraction of the investment! See: http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=2561

And increased costs for less efficacy brings usback to the US and AIDS:
1.How US is Turning Aids Into Big Business
2.Africa - the new frontier for the GE industry
3.France accuses US of Aids blackmail
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1.How US is Turning Aids Into Big Business
The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
July 20, 2004
Anne Mugisha Bwomezi
Kampala, Uganda
http://allafrica.com/stories/200407200500.html

The reason for President Museveni's renewed vigour to support US ideologies in the battle against HIV/Aids is becoming clearer after Bangkok, Thailand.

Its roots can be traced back to Cancun, Mexico and while the journey is filled with acronyms, and quasi-legal verbiage we must look closely at the World trade agreements in order to understand what the government is getting us into. In a recent article titled "WTO: Uganda to Lose Out on Drugs" by David Kaiza which was published in The East African, the author alludes to the problem of allowing the United States mentor our trade policy under the WTO. Specifically with regard to the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), he notes that; 'Under the WTO agreement, the implementation of patent rules will commence in January 2006. Countries like India and Brazil, which currently observe no patent rules, will either cease to produce generic drugs or will price them above the purchasing power of the poor countries that they target.

Advocates of drug access say that Uganda has allowed its patent legal review process to be commandeered by the United States Agency for International Development (USaid) ... The NGO coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development (HEPS) has continuously pointed out that the involvement of US aid in writing Ugandan patent laws means that it will reflect US corporate interests.

On June 27, 2002, the WTO council responsible for intellectual property rights approved a decision extending the transition period during which least-developed countries (LDCs) do not have to provide patent protection for pharmaceuticals to 2016.

The Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) also approved a waiver that would exempt poor countries from having to provide exclusive marketing rights for any new drugs in the period when they do not provide patent protection. That waiver was to have been submitted to the WTO General Council for approval on July 8, 2002. That Uganda did not take advantage of this waiver should not surprise anyone if it is true that Americans are our advisers.

Under the patent protection rules, if a country's health authority approves a new drug for sale, the patent applicant has to be given exclusive marketing rights for five years even though there is no patent (Article 70.9). The waiver exempts least developed countries from having to give these exclusive marketing rights. But Uganda appears to have opted out of taking advantage of this waiver.

Nonetheless, flexibilities are written into the TRIPS Agreement so that governments can issue compulsory licenses to allow other companies to make a patented product or use a patented process under licence without the consent of the patent owner, but only under certain conditions aimed at safeguarding the legitimate interests of the patent holder.

The African Group at the WTO pushed for clarification on this provision and on August 30, 2003 an agreement was reached allowing any member country to export pharmaceutical products made under compulsory licences within the terms set out in the decision.

The United States has however been working to ensure that its industries with patents on antiretroviral drugs do not lose out and to ensure that developing countries cannot benefit from the flexibility given by the August 2003 Agreement. First, the US government poured $ 15 billion into its own HIV campaign, outside the control of the Global Aids Fund.

Obviously a huge proportion of this money will be spent to purchase US patented drugs thereby circumventing the use of US dollars to purchase the generic drugs promoted by WHO and the Global Fund for Aids.

In a move reminiscent of the exclusion bilateral agreements that the US signed with regard to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court; the US is now entering bilateral agreements with developing countries that produce generic drugs to opt out of the August 2003 waiver agreement.

This bribery and blackmail was the focus of a statement made by France's President Jacques Chirac at the recent Aids conference in Bangkok. The Guardian of U.K. reported that Chirac accused America of blackmailing developing countries into giving up their right to produce cheap drugs for Aids victims.

Chirac said there existed a real problem of favourable trade deals being dangled before poor nations in return for those countries halting production of life-saving generic drugs. These cheap drugs compete with identical but more expensive patented varieties made by the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.

"Making certain countries drop these measures in the framework of bilateral trade negotiations would be tantamount to blackmail, since what is the point of starting treatment without any guarantee of having quality and affordable drugs in the long term?" Mireille Guigaz, France's global ambassador on Aids, said: "It is a question between the United States and developing countries, and the way the US wants to put pressure on developing countries who try to stand up for their own industries. We do not wish countries' hands [to be] tied by bilateral agreements".

Aids drugs were hugely expensive before countries like India a