Ottawa — The multinational brand-name drug industry fired back Friday at Ottawa's plans to allow production of cheap copies of patented pharmaceuticals for export to AIDS-stricken Africa, calling it a superficial gesture that will cost Canada in terms of lost research and investment dollars.
"People [in Canada] are going to pat themselves on the back for doing something that's window-dressing," said Harvey Bale, direc—tor-general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations in Geneva. "I can see the accolades, but it won't solve a thing." He cautioned that the changes contemplated in Canada will erode patent protection and scare off future research spending by biotech investors leery of changes to intellectual property right guarantees. It will be a "negative black eye for Canada" that will "very well affect the investment climate," Mr. Bale said.Industry Minister Allan Rock and Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew hope to amend Canadian law quickly to remove restrictions that have prevented the production for export of pharmaceuticals patented by other companies.
Their move comes after a call to arms from Stephen Lewis, the United Nations envoy for AIDS in Africa, to help poor nations suffering health pandemics.
The ministers' sudden announcement on Thursday took some within the federal government by surprise. The federal cabinet would need to formally support such a change, among other things, and that has not been done.
Indeed, officials questioned privately Friday whether legislative action could possibly be taken this fall, given the packed agenda that Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is now pushing through Parliament.
The will to do something appears clear, a senior government official said, but nothing may happen until 2004. That means the decision to act would ultimately fall on the shoulders of Paul Martin.
Mr. Bale questioned whether the Liberal government, even if it did introduce legislative changes, would be doing much to really help Africa.
"[Stephen] Lewis is leading us all down the primrose path to a dead end," Mr. Bale contended, saying more money for medical infrastructure in Africa, rather than yet another international supplier of cheap drugs, is what's needed to fight AIDS and other health crises.
The need for new drugs at rock-bottom prices for Africa is already well served, he said, by low-cost centres such as India that have huge manufacturing capabilities and are already providing copies of AIDS drugs to Africa at an annual price tag per patient of as low as $300 (U.S.). This effort is being matched by brand-name drug-makers who are supplying drugs at no profit or even below cost, he added.
Canadian drug-makers jumping into the fray will simply be "undercut by the Indian generic companies, the Chinese generic companies, and others," Mr. Bale said. India is so cheap a manufacturing centre that it already supplies large amounts of active drug ingredients to higher-cost centres like Canada.
Mr. Bale said the pressing need in developing countries is more cash from rich nations to fund more clinics and infrastructure to diagnose diseases: contributions to the UN's Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, to lift up health-care standards in Africa and elsewhere. "The implication is all we need is a new supply of generic drugs . . . [but] that's at the bottom of the totem pole of real solutions," Mr. Bale said.
"Poor patients who wander into a clinic [in Africa] cannot be diagnosed. There is nobody to do a CD4 count to determine whether they have the virus," he said.
"This is going to delay the debate over the real issue, which is how much money should the Canadian government send to the UN Global Fund."
The Ottawa initiative comes shortly after the World Trade Organization sealed a deal Aug. 31 that would allow developing countries to import cheap copies of patented drugs to fight health emergencies from malaria to AIDS without facing lawsuits over patent infringement.
The Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association dismissed Mr. Bale's comments, saying that their members are not looking to make a profit shipping copies of patented drugs to poor countries.
"It will not be commercially significant for any of our member companies. They're not going to make money doing this," said Jeff Connell of the CGPA.
Mr. Bale predicts Canadian generic firms cannot sustain significant shipments to Africa of low-cost drug copies at a loss, and warned that fiddling with Canada's patent law could set up a slippery slope for eroding patent protection.
Senior government officials say they're determined to craft a precise, "surgical strike" change to the act that would allow generic drug-makers to manufacture for export certain medicines still under patent, but which has no other impact on patent rules.
Mr. Bale suggests generic drug-makers in Canada have ulterior motives to erode patent protection.
With a report from Bertrand Marotte in Montreal
