From UK Guardian 6th March 01

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Crucial drug case opens in Pretoria
by Chris McGreal

The worlds largest pharmaceutical companies opened their lawsuit against the South African governments attempt to import cheaper antip-Aids drugs and other medicines yesterday by claiming that property rights were the central issue of the case.

But demonstrators outside Pretoria high court and across the globe said that what was really at stake was millions of lives of Aids sufferers.

Nearly 40 pharmaceutical companies claim that a new law which will permit the importation of generic drugs and patented medicines from suppliers at prices lower than those of the main drug giants breaches South Africa's constitution and international trade agreements.

"There can be no question that our rights are threatened", Fannie Cilliers, for the drug companies, told the court.

Representatives of Oxfam and Medicines sans Frontieres attending the trial called the legal action an act of corporate inhumanity.  Ellen't Hoen of MSF said the case boiled down to the value of human life.  "People no longer accept that profits are protected at any cost to human life.  These companies now stand hopelessly isolate.  No government supports their legal action any longer", she said.

Protesters rallied against the drug companies across South Africa and in countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the US.  In Britain, protesters picketed the Brentford headquarters of the world's largest drug company, GlaxoSmithKline.

Phil Thompson, a spokesman for the company said, "The case is nothing to do with blocking access to medicines, or price fixing.  It's about patents.  Patents do not block medicines.  They stimulate research and development."

The leadership of South Africa's powerful trade union confederation, Cosatu, led a march of several thousand people to the US embassy in Pretoria..  A verbal assault ensued after an American diplomat assigned to receive a memorandum calling on Washington to pressure the drug companies to drop their lawsuit refused to step outside the gate.

Cosatu's general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, scorned "the fat cats" in the embassy.  "These bureaucrats from the US embassy are refusing to come here.  They are treating people living with Aids, and all of us with contempt," he told the crowd.

The drug companies have also been isolated by foreign governments.  The United States, the European Union and the World Health Organisation say they do not oppose south Africa's right to implement the new legislation.  The world Trade Organisation has said that the laws do not infringe international patent protections.

Inside the court, Mr Cilliers portrayed his clients as potential victims of wholesale theft, and the South African government as bandits riding roughshod over their patents.

But he might have fatally undermined his case when he conceded to the judge, Bernard Ngoepe, that the government already had the right to import cheaper drugs under South African common law.

The judge said that if that was the case then the new law was not breaking legal ground but simply setting out regulations.  He questioned whether his court even had jurisdiction because the new legislation had yet to be signed into law by President Thabo Mbeki.

"As the acts stand now they affect your clients no more than cattle on a farm." he told Mr Cilliers.  " If they are not in operation, how are your clients affected by an act that is not working?"

Mr Cilliers said the drug companies presumed that the laws would take effect.  The government has pointed out that drugs such as the antibiotic Ciprofloxican, considered an 'essential medicine'  cost South Africa's public health sector 52p for each pill and the country's private health care providers more than £3 a tablet.  If the new law is implemented, a generic of the drug could be imported from India for just 4p a pill.