DAY FIFTY NINE:Nov. 8:
The World Trade Organization meeting opens in Doha, Qatar tomorrow. That may seem a nonsequitor, but it is related to September 11. The link is Cipro, everybody's favorite antidote for anthrax.Two weeks ago Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson hammered Germany's Bayer AG until the company caved in, agreeing to sell Cipro for 95 cents a pill, versus the standard $4.67 rate. Over the course of the negotiations Thompson threatened to violate Bayer's patent on the drug if the price didn't come down. Bayer caved.
Now AIDS activists and groups concerned about a host of diseases that plague poor countries are asking why the U.S. government doesn't support similarly strong steps on behalf of access to patented medicines for desperate countries. And they are asking why it's okay for America - both Canada and the US, in the case of Cipro - to violate patents when bioterrorism is threatened, but not okay for a country like Tanzania to do the same when hundreds of its citizens are dying daily from HIV, having never received any of the medicines that bring longer lives to Americans with HIV infection. .
Tomorrow at the WTO meeting patents will be on the table, and critics plan to demand that what's good enough for Cipro in America ought to be good enough for Crixivan and Ritonivir in Uganda.
This question of global equity came up in a car ride tonight. I had given a speech at SUNY-Stony Brook, as part of a symposia sponsored by the family of Amy Goodman. Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now", a popular alternative radio program that airs daily all over the country. Goodman and her colleague, a Jamaican TV producer named Orlando, was at the event, and then rode back into NYC with me. On the way home Orlando asked me, "What do you think is the reason people do terrorism?"
I should have realized it wasn't a naïve question.
Orlando expressed his belief that it is sad people died in the World Trade Center, but for most people of color worldwide the attack was justified. He insisted the legacy of slavery, of world concentration of wealth in America and Europe, of IMF policies in poor countries and of colonialism justify terrorist actions, including the World Trade Center catastrophe. Though he regretted the more than 5,000 deaths on September 11, Orlando insisted it was a small number compared to the "millions killed by America every year".
I winced. I argued. But in the end I listened. I could not disagree more with Orlando's position, but I wanted to understand his view. It was painful.
Ironically, tomorrow at 8am I am speaking about bioterrorism to a group of CEOs in Midtown. Orlando would no doubt consider every one of them the enemy.
These times are truly bizarre.
Be well. Stay safe. Stand defiant.
Laurie Garrett
