International pharma lobby fears India’s policies the most

Mumbai, October 15, 2013: Through the 1990s, millions of Africans were dying as big pharmaceutical groups blocked the import of cheaper generic versions of patented antiretroviral drugs. Filmmaker Dylan Mohan Gray spoke with Rema Nagarajan about his documentary Fire in the Blood, portraying Africa’s fight for HIV medicines, the controversial role of governments and pharma groups — and why India is central to this picture:

Why do you describe what happened in Africa as ‘the crime of the century’?

Well, a few years ago, at the Toronto Film Festival, i had about five seconds to make my pitch for the film — i said it was about the crime of the century. People stopped in their tracks. That set the right tone.

I do feel this film tells the story not just of the crime of this parti-cular century but one of the greatest crimes in human history — and it’s one for which not one person will ever be called to account.

Why do you say governments are greater villains than pharma companies?

Pharma companies behave in line with the system in place — the real villains of this story are governments which ignore their duty to protect the citizenry and instead do the deadly bidding of the industry. The key to the problem is monopoly, something only governments can bring into being. Taxpayers are getting ripped off in the current set-up, which gifts decades-long monopolies to pro-fit-driven private corporations that give very little in return.

It’s an absurdly inefficient system which benefits only pharma companies at a horrendous cost to society.

The fight for HIV drugs in Africa is termed a huge public relations disaster for pharma groups — do they present their side of the story in your documentary?

Pharma derives its power and financial clout from political connections. It might be convenient to call the battle for AIDS drugs in Africa a PR disaster for the industry — but how was it a disaster for them?

In the end, they always get what they want, because, as the former vice-president of Pfizer says in our film, these companies run the US government, they pull the strings — and this is certainly not limited to the US.

 

How important is India’s role in this situation?

Since changing its patent law in 1970, India’s become known as the ‘pharmacy of the world’, supplying high-quality, lower-cost medication to every corner of the planet. The country is under intense pressure by western governments on behalf of big pharma to cut off the supplies of affordable drugs for 1.3 billion Indians — and billions throughout the world.

This goes all the way to the top, people accusing India of acting outside international norms by not blindly granting blanket monopolies to big pharma’s incredibly expensive drugs.

That accusation is false and they know it — but the pharma lobby fears India’s policies the most.

With greater global awareness, is the battle for fair medication won?

No — the groundwork is being laid for future disasters on a far greater scale than that depicted in the film. Western governments are working ruthlessly to shut off affordable medicines emanating from India and other key countries, to expand the market shares and profits of their pharma conglomerates, even at the cost of tens of millions of lives.  — timesofindia.indiatimes.com