There’s no cure for AIDS
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Re “Forget the patents on AIDS drugs,” Opinion, Oct. 9
Lara Santoro writes as if there were a cure for AIDS, saying cheap copies of medicines would help patients. Unfortunately, there is no cure, just palliative care that can prolong life but only if strictly adhered to and monitored under clinical conditions. It is the lack of those clinical conditions, of staff who can prescribe the right drugs to the right people, that is the biggest problem in poor countries. The wrong drugs to the wrong people will, at best, kill them or, at worst, help HIV to mutate and become even harder to treat.
President Clinton said obtaining the anti-retroviral drugs is not the problem, but “the medicine must be accompanied by instructions, monitoring, by follow-up and changing the medicine if necessary.”
Overriding patents with compulsory licenses will do nothing to provide those clinical conditions in poor countries, and will do plenty to discourage inventions that would help people living with AIDS and other diseases of poverty. Busting patents kills the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Alec van Gelder
Research fellow
International Policy
Network, London
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