PHM-Exch> India refuses to hike cancer drug price in Huff post

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Gopal Dabade <drdabade at gmail.com>


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/obamas-health-policy-global-health-reform_n_1659742.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
*Obama's Global Health Policy Undercuts Reform At Home*

 (excerpt)

WASHINGTON -- A few hours after the Supreme Court upheld his signature
health care legislation last week, President Barack Obama approached a
White House podium, addressed the camera and declared that the nation's top
justices had reaffirmed an important guiding principle of his presidency.

"Here in America -- in the wealthiest nation on Earth -- no illness or
accident should lead to any family's financial ruin," Obama said.

That single sentence was a compelling invocation of nearly every political
theme Obama has presented on the campaign trail this year: To live in a
nation is to take part in a social contract; personal wealth does not
determine human dignity; decent people in a nation of means do not allow
the less fortunate to suffer needlessly.

But while the president has focused on lowering health care costs at home,
he has repeatedly sought to impose higher drug prices abroad. For
pharmaceutical companies, that has meant steady profits, but for the global
poor in desperate need of affordable drugs, those lofty prices are often a
matter of life and death.

Nevertheless, members of the Obama administration continue to pursue
policies around drug pricing that multiple United Nations groups, the World
Health Organization, human rights lawyers and patient advocates worldwide
decry.

Two weeks ago, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Deputy Director Teresa
Stanek Rea sparked an uproar among public health experts when she testified
before Congress<http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/Hearings%202012/hear_06272012.html>
on
multiple administration strategies to affect drug pricing abroad by using
American international political muscle. Her testimony focused on the
Indian government’s efforts earlier this year to create an affordable
generic alternative to an expensive cancer drug called Nexavar, which had
been patented by Bayer AG, a multinational pharmaceutical conglomerate best
known in the United States for aspirin pills.

Over the course of 70 minutes, Rea repeatedly
castigated<http://judiciary.edgeboss.net/wmedia/judiciary/ip/ip06272012.wvx>
India's
government for approving the generic drug, calling the move an "egregious"
violation of World Trade Organization treaties. India's decision, Rea said,
"dismayed and surprised" her, and she boasted about "personally" engaging
"various agencies of the Indian government" in efforts to overturn it.

"This is unprecedented, really shocking testimony," says Judit Rius, the
U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign, an
international humanitarian aid group that won the Nobel Peace Prize in
1999. "It doesn't have any ground in international legal norms. I've never
really seen a U.S. government official misinforming Congress in public like
this. It's embarrassing for the White House."

The Rea hearing, which had all the trappings of an inconsequential
technocratic snooze fest, was almost completely ignored by American media
-- drowned out by the furor over the Supreme Court’s historic health care
ruling. Only eight members of the 23-person House Subcommittee on
Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet showed up and asked
questions.

Thus far the Indian government has resisted American pressure and continues
to offer the generic alternative, which was approved in March after several
months of negotiations with Bayer.
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