Cigarettes and a Beer for African AIDS Victims

It’s clear by now that most people have stopped listening to campaign rhetoric, but it turns out that even the politicians have stopped listening to themselves. At least so one would think, seeing Vice President Al Gore presiding at the U.N. Security Council debate on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It was certainly a nice photo op, if nothing else. “We tend to think of a threat to security,” he said sternly, “in terms of war and peace. Yet no one can doubt that the havoc wreaked and the toll exacted by HIV/AIDS do threaten our security.” Then he proceeded to announce that next year’s federal budget would include $150 million to help fight AIDS and other infectious diseases in Africa--which works out to about $4 per person with HIV. In effect, Gore was telling them they could now afford a pack of cigarettes and a beer before they die.

Behind the unctuous presentation of Gore, humanitarian world leader, lies a very different--and very disturbing--story about “the havoc wreaked and the toll exacted” by years of pandering to the drug industry, a frequent and generous campaign contributor. In his role as co-chair of the U.S.-South African Binational Commission, Gore, according to a 1999 State Department report to Congress, has spearheaded “an assiduous, concerted campaign” to stop South Africa from making low-cost AIDS drugs available to its millions of infected citizens. Gore sided with the drug industry when it sued the South African government to prevent it from implementing its 1997 Medicines Act, which allows for “compulsory licensing” and “parallel importing” in order to drastically reduce the price of AIDS drugs.

It was only after the AIDS activist group ACT UP repeatedly protested at Gore campaign rallies that the vice president began to change his tune--little by little, culminating in the U.N. speech. But tune changes by this administration, even if they lead to policy shifts, turn out to be about as meaningful as the vice president’s wardrobe changes. While Gore sounds as if he has just announced a medical Marshall Plan, the big drug companies are still pressing their suit against the South African government; our government still has not sent a clear signal to Thailand that it can proceed with the production of generic AIDS drugs without fear of U.S. trade sanctions; and Pfizer is still threatening to sue the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Doctors Without Borders for bringing into Kenya a generic version of Fluconazole, a powerful drug for AIDS-related illnesses.

On Wednesday, two days after Gore’s speech, AIDS activists, as well as representatives from Doctors Without Borders and other public interest groups, met with government officials to push the administration to take the leap from lofty rhetoric to saving lives. If Gore had actually listened to himself, he might have been moved by his words to do something more than make a public relations gesture. “I know $150 million sounds like a lot of money,” James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, who was at the meeting, told me. “After all, that’s more than Regis gives away. But it’s as if whoever decided on that figure had not read the first part of Gore’s speech about this being the greatest public health disaster in human history.”

So despite all the compassionate rhetoric, on the ground almost nothing has changed. Let’s imagine for a moment that we really cared for these millions of infected people, rather than just using them as political props for an election-time issue of the week designed to placate an outraged constituency. As Love said: “The real question would then be, how cheap can we make an AIDS cocktail and how fast can we get it to the people who need it?”

Gore should not be allowed to pull a fast one. Only continued protests and media scrutiny can provide the pressure to the entrenched power of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, where top jobs are filled with former government officials.

It’s astounding that Gore is now sounding the alarm about the AIDS epidemic in Africa as if he had not for years made trade, rather than public health, the determining priority for U.S. policy. He can neither be trusted nor counted on to follow up his warnings with meaningful action. Talk is cheap; AIDS drugs still aren’t.