PRIVATE PATENTS AND PUBLIC HEALTH

HEALTH AT THE CENTRE OF TRADE TALKS FROM GENEVA
TO SEATTLE AND DOHA
CONCERN GROWS AT THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
In 1996, the annual meeting of the WHO’s member states, the WHA,
debated for the first time the effects of new WTO trade rules on access to
medicines. This debate was long overdue, considering that the WTO
agreements were negotiated without input from health experts and had
already gone into effect. It nevertheless unleashed a series of activities
that would lead to the adoption of the WTO Doha Declaration on TRIPS
and Public Health in 2001.
A WHA resolution in 1996 gave the WHO a mandate to monitor and
study the effects of trade agreements, and particularly the TRIPS
Agreement, on public health. In 1998, the WHO published the first guide
with recommendations to member states on how to implement TRIPS
while limiting the negative effects of higher levels of patent protection on
medicines availability. 32
WHO’s involvement in trade issues did not come without controversy.
In fact, the response to WHO’s guidance on TRIPS and public health from
the United States (US) and a number of European countries was fiercely
negative. In particular, the US, working very closely with drug-company
lobby groups, pressured the WHO to withdraw the publication, calling
the book “an outrageous and biased attempt to mold international
opinion.” 33 The publication was initially withdrawn. The controversy
over the publication was fuelled by a turf war between the WTO and the
WHO over the competency to make pronouncements on trade agreements
and the US and European Union’s (EU) position that it was none of WHO’s
business to meddle in trade and IP matters. In the background was also
the legal challenge by 39 drug companies to South Africa’s medicines act,
a case that would come to a head in 2001 (see Introduction, “How the HIV
pandemic changed everything”).
The then WHO Director General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, who had
just taken office, stood firm. She invited various parties to express their
views and published those together with the original text of the guide.
But she resisted pressures to withdraw the publication as no significant
factual errors could be found in it. She only changed the colour of the
cover from red to blue. 34
The WHO’s involvement in trade and IP issues would remain highly
controversial in the years that followed. The simple emphasis that the
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ENDING GLOBAL DIVERSITY IN PATENT LAWS: THE TRIPS AGREEMENT
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