[470] in peace2
Help get AIDS medicines to Africa
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sanjay Basu)
Fri Nov 17 21:50:10 2000
Message-Id: <200011180250.VAA03747@melbourne-city-street.MIT.EDU>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 21:49:46 -0500
To: peace-list@mit.edu
From: Sanjay Basu <sanjayb@MIT.EDU>
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<font face="
Verdana" size=5 color="#000000"><b>Help MIT students get AIDS drugs to
Africa.<br>
<br>
How?<br>
<br>
Join us as we rally in solidarity against Pfizer’s price embargo on AIDS
drugs provision to African nations.<br>
<br>
What are we talking about?<br>
<br>
<u><div align="center">
PFIZER FACT SHEET: <br>
<br>
</font></b></u><font face="Symbol" size=3 color="#000080"></div>
· </font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Pfizer makes a life-saving
drug called fluconazole, which treats two AIDS related opportunistic
diseases a painful and deadly brain infection called cryptococcal
meningitis and another potentially fatal disease called esophageal
candidiasis. Ten percent (10%) of 34.5 million HIV/AIDS
sufferers worldwide, 3-4 million people, will succumb to these two
diseases. <br>
<br>
</font><font face="Symbol">·
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Fluconazole costs $12.20
wholesale in the U.S., and through local subsidiaries is sold for $4.15
per pill to the South African government and $7.00 per pill on the
private market (retail price $20.75). In Kenya, where Pfizer also
has exclusive rights to make it, fluconazole costs $18.00 per pill.
Contrast that with Thailand, where generic versions are allowed and the
drug costs 24 cents per pill. <br>
<br>
</font><font face="Symbol">·
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Because flouconazole is used
quite successfully to threat women’s yeast infections, toe fungus, and
oral thrush in the First World, it produces more than $1 billion in sales
each year. <br>
<br>
</font><font face="Symbol">·
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Relying on blockbuster drugs
like Lipitor (cholesterol), Zoloft (depression), and Viagra (impotence),
and through a recent merger, Pfizer has become the biggest drug company
in the world and the fifth largest company in the world. On sales
of $31 billion, it “earned” $4.9 billion of profit in 1999.<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Symbol">·
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Pfizer has <b>blocked African
countries’ efforts </b>to get around prohibitively high prices by
developing or importing generic versions of fluconazole.
Through its local subsidiary and trade association, it has gone so far as
to join a lawsuit to block South Africa’s 1997 Medicines Act, which
allowed the compulsory licensing/production of generic drugs or the
cheaper importation.<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Symbol">·
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Pfizer justifies its actions
by claiming that it has “intellectual property rights” to a drug it
created an unbreakable 20-year patent. It justifies its
profits based on alleged research and development costs, most of which
are in fact derived from government research, tax subsidized, and/or
oriented towards “me-too” patents of previously developed products.
Pfizer spends three times as much on marketing and administration as it
does on research and development! <br>
<br>
</font><font face="Symbol">·
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">Pfizer will tell you that it
has recently offered to make fluconazole available for free in South
Africa. <b>While they signed an agreement to provide AIDS drugs,
they have not actually fulfilled it, even though a year has already
passed since the signature of the AIDS drugs provision deal.
</b>Pfizer only made a public relations move in response to extreme
pressure from activists worldwide. <br>
<br>
</font><font face="Symbol">·
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times">South African activists, the
Treatment Action Campaign, have heroically launched a Defiance Campaign
to import generic fluconazole from Thailand, threatening to make it
available for free.<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Garamond" size=5><b>To help alleviate this problem,
join other MIT students as we rally for the provision of AIDS drugs on
World AIDS Day, <u>December 1st</u>. A team of MIT students will leave
from <u>Lobby 7</u> at <u>3:30 p.m.</u> to join a rally with speakers and
a vigil in front of Pfizer headquarters, 620 Memorial Drive (just past
Tang Hall).<br>
<br>
</font></b>
<BR>
<div>------------------------------------------------------</div>
<div>Sanjay Basu </div>
<div>MIT</div>
<div>450 Memorial Drive </div>
<div>Cambridge, MA 02139 </div>
<div>(617) 225-9394 (H)</div>
<div>(617) 726-5746 (O)</div>
<div>(208) 246-3519 (fax)</div>
<div>(617) 560-2119 (pager)</div>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div>
<a href="http://web.mit.edu/sanjayb/www" EUDORA=AUTOURL>http://web.mit.edu/sanjayb/www</a></div>
<div>sanjayb@mit.edu</div>
<br>
for instant contact, e-mail 6175602119@airtouchpaging.com
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