03-24-2005, 09:57 AM
<b>India Alters Law on Drug Patent</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->India, a major source of inexpensive AIDS drugs, passed a new patent law yesterday that groups providing drugs to the world's poorest patients fear will choke off their supply of new treatments.
The new law, amending India's 1970 Patent Act, affects everything from electronics to software to medicines, and has been expected for years as<b> a condition for India to join the World Trade Organization.</b>
But because millions of poor people in India and elsewhere - including by some estimates half the AIDS patients in the Third World - rely on India's generic drug industry, lobbyists for multinational drug companies as well as activists fighting for cheap drugs had descended on New Delhi to try to influence the outcome.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In Africa, exports by Indian companies, especially Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories, helped drive the annual price of antiretroviral treatment down from $15,000 per patient a decade ago to about $200 now. They also simplified therapy by putting three AIDS drugs in one pill. <b>Dr. Yusuf Hamied, Cipla's chairman, called the new law "a very sad day for India."</b>
But some other Indian drug makers, along with multinational companies, praised it. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, a Geneva-based lobbying group, called the law "a significant step" that would let India "take a leading role in global pharmaceutical research and development."
<b>S. Ramakrishna, chief lobbyist for Pfizer India</b>, a subsidiary of the world's largest drug maker, said the bill's passage abandoned "the utopian concept that every invention should be as free as air or water," according to The International Herald Tribune.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Surprising no protest from Roys,Chatterji, Pathkar and others.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->India, a major source of inexpensive AIDS drugs, passed a new patent law yesterday that groups providing drugs to the world's poorest patients fear will choke off their supply of new treatments.
The new law, amending India's 1970 Patent Act, affects everything from electronics to software to medicines, and has been expected for years as<b> a condition for India to join the World Trade Organization.</b>
But because millions of poor people in India and elsewhere - including by some estimates half the AIDS patients in the Third World - rely on India's generic drug industry, lobbyists for multinational drug companies as well as activists fighting for cheap drugs had descended on New Delhi to try to influence the outcome.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In Africa, exports by Indian companies, especially Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories, helped drive the annual price of antiretroviral treatment down from $15,000 per patient a decade ago to about $200 now. They also simplified therapy by putting three AIDS drugs in one pill. <b>Dr. Yusuf Hamied, Cipla's chairman, called the new law "a very sad day for India."</b>
But some other Indian drug makers, along with multinational companies, praised it. The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, a Geneva-based lobbying group, called the law "a significant step" that would let India "take a leading role in global pharmaceutical research and development."
<b>S. Ramakrishna, chief lobbyist for Pfizer India</b>, a subsidiary of the world's largest drug maker, said the bill's passage abandoned "the utopian concept that every invention should be as free as air or water," according to The International Herald Tribune.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Surprising no protest from Roys,Chatterji, Pathkar and others.