South Africa passed a law last year that gives the Ministry of Health discretion to authorize parallel importing and compulsory licensing in critical situations. In the U.S. the debate erupted in public recently when Vice President Al Gore declared his candidacy for the White House. AIDS activists heckled him and brandished signs accusing him of siding with the drug companies. A similar struggle has been going on in Thailand, which has an estimated 1.5 million HIV infections out of a population of 60 million. Yet Thailand's ability to produce drugs locally has forced the multinational companies to drop prices.
Pharmaceutical companies insist the high prices are necessary to finance new-drug development.
That's certainly true, at least initially. Yet many of the recent breakthroughs have been paid for by U.S. taxpayers. DDI was developed at the National Institutes of Health and licensed to Bristol-Myers Squibb. But even that has raised a red flag among activists. A better solution, the activists suggest, would be for drugs known to be effective to be made available at a price these regions can afford.