Leaks Show Senate Staffer Threatened Colombia With Loss Of Foreign Aid Over Cheap Cancer Drug

[Purveyor]

A new report says that the pharmaceutical industry is using the U.S. Congress as its enforcement arm against firms that want to manufacture cheap cancer drugs abroad.

Colombia’s Minister of Health Alejandro Gaviria received a dire warning via diplomatic channels that his plan — announced on April 28 — to begin production of a generic leukemia drug could cost the South American country hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid.

According to The Intercept, leaked communications from the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Colombian embassy in Washington expressed concern about possible congressional retaliation if the country approved plans to manufacture a version of imatinib, used in treating chronic myeloid leukemia and gastrointestinal tumors.

The current annual cost of treatment using imatanib is over $15,000 — almost twice the average Colombian’s income.

In a letter, Deputy Chief Andrés Flórez, described a meeting with Senate Finance Committee International Trade Counsel Everett Eissenstat. According to Flórez, Eissenstat said that authorizing the generic version would “violate the intellectual property rights” of Novartis, the manufacturer of the drug.

According to the letter, Eissenstat stated “if the Ministry of Health did not correct this situation, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States and related interest groups could become very vocal and interfere with other interests that Colombia could have in the United States.”

more...

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/revealed-leaks-show-senate-staffer-threatened-columbia-with-loss-of-foreign-aid-over-cheap-cancer-drug/

[dhill926]

1. good to see everyone has...

our best interests at heart...

[silverweb]

2. A merger of corporate and state power...

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]You finish the thought.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. I am officially so embarrassed to be an American.

[Purveyor]

4. Just seems like it gets worse every single day... Is there no end to it? eom

[elleng]

8. Yes it does,

and it demands an 'upheaval,' nothing less.

[yurbud]

11. it's not worse. We are just learning how things have always worked

[notadmblnd]

5. Just lost a step sister to this disease

She/we didn't even know she had it until after she died.

[azmom]

6. The US cares more about violating intellectual property rights

than violating human rights. What are we?

[elljay]

7. Well, depends upon who is profiting

You see, we have been allowing China to violate our IP rights massively for decades. Why? Because the owners of the multinationals make billions of dollars from China. Their personal profits are so much more important than the economic rights and health of our country. The U.S. occasionally whispers an objection, but never anything to threaten our corporate overlords. Same reason we enforce our IP against poor countries who have the unmitigated gall to hurt U.S. corporate profits by manufacturing medicine for the poor. We are most of the way down the path to fascism; the Obama/Clinton TPP will push us further towards the end of our democratic experiment.

[Baobab]

10. No it cares not one bit if the violee is poor.

Millions of dollars have been stolen from yours truly.

The system is totally broken.

[Baobab]

9. Fighting generic drugs is sick - we need to end lobbying- period. end this stuff.

People are dying of cancer.

[Doctor_J]

12. These trade pacts are great!!!!!!! If you don't like them you are a racist, sexist, and communist!!

Oh and by the way, the president would never put the lobbyists ahead of the people.