"We're Not Very Good At Politics"
Bethell, Tom
"We're Not Very Good at Politics" Even free drugs can't buy Big Pharma love Even though I have promised him anonymity, communications are spotty, guarded, and interrupted. He's in the air, or on...
...You can no longer get into the huge building without passwords and letters of introduction...
...That's why the AIDS activists don't object to the high domestic price of these drugs...
...Conferees awaited in the Dean Acheson Auditorium...
...Members of Nader's Project on Technology had formed a non-profit company "that would soon ask the government to allow it to make and sell a low cost version of d4T, an AIDS medicine that is sold by Bristol-Myers for $10 a day in the United States...
...So many anti-hypertension products out there...
...He's still on the phone 15 minutes later-probably some new fire has blazed up and must be extinguished without delay...
...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail...
...The commercial payback for the anti-retrovirals," he said, and then he paused...
...Why did I think that the commercial exigencies of selling, even as a non-profit, would end their supposed moral superiority...
...We may be moving toward a deal that could keep everyone happy except taxpayers: a kind of Marshall AIDS Plan, with the OECD and the European Community buying drugs and distributing them...
...In that war, Israel conquered the Gaza Strip, the vast Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights...
...One wonders whether those who keep talking about "Greater Israel" and who wish to pressure Israel to divest itself of a big chunk of its territory are aware of it...
...Different pills take different routes to the same health destination...
...It is clear to all knowledgeable in military matters that, for immutable strategic reason, Israel cannot for any foreseeable future abandon or yield military control of Judea/Sumaria (the "West Bank") and of the Golan Heights...
...But when Bristol-Myers Squibb said it would no longer enforce its patent rights to the antiretroviral d4T, allowing generics to be sold for $350 per patient per year, the activists were ecstatic...
...probably more than any other in the history of mankind, has been subject to politics," he said as we left, and "when it comes to engaging in politics, we're bad at it...
...Tagamet meets Zantac, Prozac meets Zoloft, Diflucan, Sporanox...
...His glossy brochures and corporate overheads immediately made me wary...
...And unless that mindset changes, not until the Arab states have become democracies and have come to full acceptance of Israel, are willing to make true peace with it, and are prepared to establish normal and friendly relations with Israel can any possible territorial adjustment be considered...
...Most people don't realize how small it really is...
...Resolution No...
...But it seems that the size of Israel, whether "greater" or "lesser" is not at all the concern of Israel's implacable Arab enemies...
...I couldn't wait to hear what my drug executive friend would have to say...
...One could make the case," my man said...
...There he is, standing outside the C Street entrance in the frigid sunshine, cell phone clamped to his ear, briefcase in hand...
...Their clients are already on welfare...
...AIDS drugs worldwide are about 2 and a half per cent of all drug sales ($5 billion...
...Your brand name increasingly must compete with their brand name...
...He calls from 35,000 feet, then the line goes dead...
...Israel's alleged expansionist ambitions have long been a staple of Arab anti-Israel propaganda...
...There's one man I have been speaking to on and off by phone, a vice president with one of the biggest companies, but even though I have promised him anonymity, communications are spotty, guarded, and interrupted...
...Greater Israel" Does it have any relation to reality...
...The Myth of Greater Israel...
...The figures bear this out...
...A sip of coffee...
...So that is what they want...
...Once a drug is in mass production, making additional pills is not much more expensive than multiplying a software program...
...42B Stripes on the Flag...
...Ralph Nader and Jamie Love want to go into the pharmaceutical business themselves...
...But that has no basis in fact, of course...
...But what does it really mean...
...Palestine," part of the Ottoman Empire before World War I, came under British mandate after that war...
...Israel is one of the smallest countries in the world...
...if it were dropped into Lake Michigan it would disappear from sight without a trace...
...Facts and Logic About the Middle East PO...
...Israel's Borders...
...What are the facts...
...The drug companies have resisted a prescription drug benefit for Medicare patients, because the European experience showed them that when government becomes the dominant or "monop Sony" buyer, it soon dictates the price...
...I am beginning to see why...
...A look at the map is revealing...
...72,209 sq...
...Share prices are holding up...
...Box 590359 San Francisco,CA 94159 FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501(c)(3) This ad has been published and paid for by organization...
...213,673 sq...
...Interesting...
...There are strident requests by the Arab countries, by the Palestinians, and indeed by much of the world that Israel should once and for all abandon its dream of a "Greater Israel...
...Knowledgeable people in the executive suites are hard to reach...
...Does it have any relation to reality...
...00'0"O!Volera Make the Net Fly Ar' We may be moving toward a deal that could keep everyone happy except taxpayers: a kind of Marshall AIDS Plan, with the European Community buying drugs and distributing them...
...Israel's current borders are the result of the 1948 War of Independence, in which six Arab armies invaded the new-born state, but were utterly defeated, and the 1967 Six-Day War, in which those same armies once again invaded Israel...
...The State Department, barricaded to a fare-theewell these days, seemed oddly appropriate...
...What he told me over coffee rang true enough...
...Not free drugs for poor people, but the abandonment of patent rights...
...There are roles for governments...
...As we walked back to the State Department, he made familiar observations about research costs: $600 million to bring a new drug to market, only one in 5,000 compounds goes all the way through the 12-year testing and approval pipeline...
...Arab propaganda has it that the two stripes on the flag of Israel, above and below the star of David, represent the Nile and the Euphrates River, respectively, and signify Israel's expansionist desire, to form an "empire" that would supposedly reach from Cairo to Baghdad...
...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in national newspapers and maga zines...
...And if drugs can be cheaper abroad, why not cheaper at home...
...The groups that have been all along driving the publicity on this issue, such as Treatment Action Campaign and Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology, headed by James Love, actually resist philanthropic offers...
...This disease, 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001 you do with an intelligent Internet...
...I didn't have the State Department access code so we found a cafeteria nearby...
...But I knew it would be days before I could get him on the phone...
...We have virtually no overhead...
...Later that day I picked up the New York Times, and came across an amazing story deep inside the business section...
...If the petition is successful," the story continued, "the group may also ask the government to let it sell cancer drugs and other medicines...
...The Arab counties in contrast are huge-they occupy twice the area of the United States...
...Nader's people said they could sell it for onetenth that amount...
...Reverse engineers have been busy from Bombay to Buenos Aires, threatening the bottom line...
...Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East F AM and exposing false propaganda that might harm the inter eats of the United States and its allies in that area of the world.Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...
...Profit-makers have yet to figure out how to prevail, at least in PR, over those who seem virtuous mainly because they earn nothing...
...To apply such a concept to a country as small as Israel would almost seem a mockery...
...If these drugs can be made available in poor countries, why not other drugs...
...BY TOM BETHELL The drug companies have been taking a public-relations beating, because their patented AIDS medicines are too expensive for sub-Saharan Africa...
...The drug companies do have a real concern...
...Nowhere in any documents of the Jewish state, in any statement by even the most "radical" spokesman can reference to anything like that be found...
...This means the life-span of market exclusivity is not what it was...
...Bristol-Myers, with a larger involvement than most companies, sold $250,000 worth in Africa in 1999...
...It's a myth...
...Israel is and has always been prepared to grant full autonomy to the Arabs living in Judea/Sumaria...
...But you never see the story told from the companies' point of view...
...Includ ing the vaunted "West Bank," the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, the entire area of the country is barely over 10,000 square miles...
...There's an upcoming "essential drugs" conference in Oslo in a couple of weeks, he said, and he has noticed that the language is changing...
...Wouldn't that stifle the next round of yet-to-be-invented life-saving drugs...
...He's an expert on intellectual property, and generics are on his mind...
...Yes, he said, but that's not what the activist groups really want...
...For those who want to do more with a smarter Internet...
...See for yourself...
...Despite the adverse publicity, the pharmaceuticals are still making tons of money...
...Israel is so small that its area is less than half the size of San Bernardino County, California...
...The very existence of Israel, of a Jewish state in their midst of whatever size, is unacceptable to the Arabs...
...Have to be careful how you say this...
...160,222 sq...
...Greater Israel, indeed...
...He's in the air, or on the road, out of the country...
...The drug was developed using government-sponsored research, and under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act the government can require companies selling such drugs to license them to others if the product is not made available on "reasonable terms...
...The new BristolMyers Squibb annual report shows pre-tax earnings of $5.47 billion on net sales of $18.2 billion, with $3.4 billion in cash and marketable securities...
...He left home at 5:30 that morning and no doubt will be in another country by nightfall...
...Expensive is unreasonable, goes the theory...
...France is twenty times as large as Israel, California fifteen times as large, Syria about seven times as large, and "tiny" Ecuador ten times as large...
...The debate on the price of AIDS drugs, said the story by Melody Petersen, is now "moving to the United States...
...And Israel also repossessed the provinces of Judea/Sumaria, (the "West Bank"), and the eastern part of Jerusalem, which had been occupied by the Jordanians nineteen years earlier, when they invaded the just new-born Jewish state...
...Volere content networking solutions...
...He has an appointment at the State Department-one of those impossibly acronymed, inter-agency, public-private huddles...
...The Golan Heights were part of Palestine...
...16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001 You deserve a factual look at...
...agreed to donate Diflucan, an antifungal in demand for AIDS-related conditions in Africa, an activist group disparaged the gift...
...Now he's coming to Washington and there's a breakfast-meeting possibility...
...Rival products treat the same condi tion...
...It is clear that the concept of "Greater Israel," lacks any validity and has no basis in fact...
...It's wheelchair accessible but citizen-inaccessible...
...He looked at his watch...
...Less noted has been the increasing competition between the pharmaceuticals themselves, even when armed with patents...
...110,688 sq...
...But domestically, the drug companies made no objection to government reimbursement of anti-retrovirals under the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, now costing taxpayers about $750 million a year...
...He's in the air, or on the road, out of the country...
...Now a comparable international program...
...Obviously, Israel has no territorial ambitions...
...In order to achieve peace with Egypt, Israel returned to it all of the Sinai...
...Now it's not just AIDS they are pressing us on, but communicable diseases, malaria, and tuberculosis...
...Call Volera 1-800-219-1800 or visit volera.com...
...For example, when Pfizer Inc...
...Not Nader's concern...
...Worldwide Big Pharma sales are $200 billion a year, with Africa accounting for just one percent...
...So they can give the drugs away in Africa, right...
...As it looks right now, that may still take some time...
...In ten years, sales have doubled, but profits have almost tripled...
...Israel France California Syria Ecuador 10,840 sq...
...I * % AT ir Greater Israel...
...The real money was in anti-hypertension drugs, in cholesterol, pain, anti-depressants, antibiotics, and all the rest...
...It is not so much the cost of giveaways or foregone sub-Saharan sales but the slippery slope...
...All it wants is to live in peace within secure and defensible borders, just as any other country and as required under U.N...
...I think it's fair to say no researchbased company is going to live or die at the margin by anti-virals...
...But the market for AIDS drugs in Africa has been tiny...
...First of all, the drug companies never thought of themselves as having a stake in Africa, nor much of one in AIDS generally...
Vol. 34 • May 2001 • No. 4
