Harvard Professors Call For More Money To Fight AIDS

Nearly 130 members of the Harvard faculty signed a statement released yesterday calling on developed countries to give $1.1 billion a year to fight AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

Stone Professor of International Trade Jeffrey D. Sachs `76 organized the signature drive. Outgoing Provost Harvey V. Fineberg `67 and Carswell Professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy K. Anthony Appiah were among the 128 signers.

In a media conference call yesterday, Sachs predicted that all companies producing effective HIV drugs would eventually provide them to poor African countries at production cost, even though 30 drug companies recently sued the South African government over its attempts to legalize generic copies of HIV drugs.

Sachs said the U.S. government, and not drug companies, is the "limiting factor" preventing the effective distribution of HIV drugs to African countries. He estimated that about 25 million people are HIV positive in southern and eastern Africa and 3 to 4 million are facing imminent death that could be prevented by these medicines.

"We can raise people from their deathbeds with these medications," said Professor of Medicine Bruce D. Walker, the other primary sponsor of the statement.

The statement comes on the heels of a series of breakthroughs in the stalemate between public health advocates calling for AIDS drug cocktails to be made available in Africa at reduced prices and the multinational pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the drugs, who wish to protect their profits and intellectual property rights.

Just last month, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) announced that it would not seek to stop generic companies in Africa from producing copies of an anti-retroviral drug licensed to BMS by Yale University.

The move followed efforts by the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders, which urged Yale to relax its patent rights.

Sachs said maintaining pharmaceutical companies' intellectual property rights was an important but secondary goal, and said their profits would not suffer due to African distribution below market price.

"The pharmaceutical industry knows its livelihood and profits for innovation are overwhelmingly in rich countries and not at all in poor countries," he said. "Intellectual property rights are very important, but that should not exclude the poor from staying alive."

Walker said although Harvard has been at the forefront of AIDS research, it has not focused on drug design, and neither the University nor any of its faculty own any patents on licensed AIDS drugs the way Yale does.

But Sachs still called on Harvard to make an independent contribution to fighting AIDS in Africa.

"A university with a $19.2 billion endowment should say we are also part of global civil society," he said. "The University [should] put in scaled-up training [for the use of HIV drugs] on Harvard's tab to make this work."

Activist groups hailed the spirit of the statement but questioned its reliance on Western nations and its faith in the pharmaceutical companies as future allies.

"Where are the developing countries in all this?" asked Toby B. Kasper `97, coordinator for Doctors Without Borders' Access to Essential Medicines campaign in South Africa. "Even when South Africa is offered free drugs, it routinely says, 'Why weren't we consulted in the development of this plan? Why are we being told how to run our health care?' And I think that's understandable."

Kasper also pointed to generic drug companies as crucial in the fight. "The fact that the multinationals are suing is a problem," he said. "Unless competition is sustained, things will go back to the way they were before. No solution can be based solely on the multinationals doing the right thing. We need generic companies to be there, and developing countries want them there. They don't want to rely on the whims of multinationals, whose bottom line is the bottom line."