Pfizer chief's speech disrupted

2004-07-13 12:56

Bangkok, Thailand - About 100 noisy Aids activists carrying mock corpses disrupted a speech by the head of Pfizer, accusing his and other multinational drug firms of denying lifesaving drugs to HIV sufferers by charging inflated prices.

The activists, carrying stuffed black plastic bags made to look like bodies, walked into a meeting room at the International Aids Conference minutes after Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell started speaking.

"Break the patents, treat the people," they shouted.

The noise prompted McKinnell to sit down. He was giving a speech at a debate on intellectual property rights and antiretroviral drugs. The activists, dumped the body bags on the stage, made a brief statement to the audience and left after 10 minutes.

Activists say drugs made by Western companies are too expensive for people in the developed world to afford. Also, the intellectual property rights, or patents, that the companies hold sometimes prevent poor countries from manufacturing copies.

Drug industry advocates say the high prices are to offset the billions of dollars that the companies spend on research. McKinnell, resuming his speech after the disruption, said that without intellectual property rights, researchers would not have the incentive to develop HIV drugs.

"IP drives innovation," McKinnell said. He said Pfizer invests $7.9bn a year in "the latest equipment and technology, the very smartest people."

Without intellectual property rights, "you would have exactly the same number of drugs that has been discovered in the Soviet Union in the past 50 years, which I think is about one," he said.

Walden Bello, director of Focus on the Global South, an anti-globalisation organisation, told the debate that "big pharma" is a big part of why not enough medicine is getting to the needy in the developed world.

"In terms of HIV/Aids, big pharma is less concerned about saving lives and more concerned about protecting patents," Bello said.

"Big pharma worries that if it loosens its tough stance on intellectual property rights on HIV/Aids drugs, it will lead to a collapse of the whole system on the monopoly pricing," he said.

He called for a new research and development, perhaps co-ordinated by the United Nations, that would include government and civil society.

- AP