If someone asked you generically whether you "value life," you would probably simply say, "yes." That is, unless you were a member of the Bush administration and you were speaking candidly. If, somehow, you were that oxymoron, you would say "yes, I value life, but only if it means protecting our campaign donors' profit margins." You would say this because, as a member of this White House, you would be complicit in trying to quietly use the U.S. government's power to prevent affordable AIDS drugs from being used in the developing world.
Yes, as the Beltway media runs themselves out of breath chasing down those critical investigative stories about Barack Obama's workout schedule, our government is quietly trying to bully Thailand into backing off its plan to license generic versions of AIDS medicines for its disease-plagued population (A quick glance around the Internets suggests that the only major newspaper that even bothered to mention this is the Wall Street Journal - and that mention was buried at the bottom of a gossip column).
This particular effort is making pharmaceutical giant Merck angry, because if Thailand moves forward, it will be producing cheaper versions of drugs Merck regularly profiteers off of. It doesn't seem to matter that this move could save tens of thousands of lives. It doesn't seem to matter to the Bush administration that Thailand is merely exercising its specific rights under the very same "free" trade agreements it publicly champions - agreements that drug companies like Merck have used their clout pushing. All that seems to matter is that Merck has given millions to the Republican Party over the last decade, and now it's time for a little payback. Thus, instead of say, our government's Centers for Disease Control publicly congratulating Thailand for its aggressive moves to stamp out this plague that presents a global security threat, we get our government's trade officials demanding Thailand back off.
This kind of behavior, of course, is nothing new. In the interest of not creating work for myself, let me just cite a few excerpts from Hostile Takeover that shows how often this happens (the source citations are in the book).
Here's our government "valuing life" in Brazil in 2001:
In 2001 President Bush began pushing the so-called "Free Trade Area of the Americas." In the name of "free" trade, he stressed that the pact would remove all tariffs and widen NAFTA to cover the entire South American continent. "We've embraced a collective responsibility to break down the barriers of poverty [and] disease," he said. "Open trade is essential foundation for that prosperity and that possibility." Yet, six months later, the Washington Post reported that the Bush administration was employing previously-negotiated restrictions in supposedly "free" trade treaties "to keep Brazil and other developing countries from securing broad rights to override patents and lower the prices of drugs for treating AIDS and other illnesses" plaguing their populations.
Here's our government "valuing life" right here at home:
In 2004, Abbott Laboratories jacked up the price of its key AIDS drug Norvir by 400 percent in one year, despite the drug being developed with $3.2 million of federal money. When Abbott faced questions about its move, the company's CEO said "Abbott is absolutely committed to ensuring that ... not a single patient goes without Norvir because of the re-pricing." Yet he refused to reverse the price hike. Activists then petitioned the government to invoke a 1980 law that authorizes other companies to manufacture lower-priced, generic copies of taxpayer-financed drugs to address emergency "health or safety needs." Not surprisingly, the petition was rejected by the Bush administration.
And perhaps the most middle-finger-giving moment of all, here was our government "valuing life" by making sure the much-touted Global AIDS Fund would have its purchasing power watered down by holding it hostage to high prices:
Within months of Bush appointing Eli Lilly's former CEO to head the Global AIDS fund, the White House said the fund's money had to be used only on expensive brand-name drugs, instead of cheaper generics, thus severely weakening the fund's impact.
So the next time you hear a member of the Bush administration or a Republican congressman spout off about how they "value life" - remember their complicity in the global AIDS holocaust, and remember that their platitudes quickly disappear when their donors call.
Cross-posted at Sirotablog and Huffington Post