People Power vs. AIDS

Naina Dhingra

August 17, 2006

Wednesday was protest day at the AIDS conference in Toronto, as activists made their anger with U.S. government policies known.

Over 200 people from Asia, Africa and North America marched through the conference halls into the press room demanding a halt to U.S. Free Trade Agreements. Activists chanted “FTAs kill people with AIDS” and draped a large banner over the press room that said “FTA: Death Under Patent.”

 U.S. FTAs severely restrict generic versions of new medicines which are crucial to lowering prices. “Under the name of free trade, the U.S. is pushing for monopoly on new medicines, thus driving up the cost for some of the world’s poorest people,” said Rohit Malpani, policy advisor for Oxfam International. In the past five years, the U.S. has concluded negotiations with 12 developing countries. Each agreement includes intellectual property rules which exceed World Trade Organization standards and often U.S. law with provisions that include: expanding the scope of pharmaceutical patents; limiting the grounds for issuing compulsory license; and preventing countries from importing drugs from countries where they are cheaper.

And that wasn’t the only protest today. In a session titled, “25 Years of AIDS,” U.S. activists stormed the stage prior to the speech of Tony Fauci, director of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Disease challenging him to use his influence with President Bush to prioritize honest HIV prevention and treatment access. While President Bush continues to receive accolades for increasing money for global AIDS, domestic spending has been flat-lined and even cut for many community-based organizations. The administration has instead prioritized HIV testing despite the fact there is a major gap in access to AIDS treatment in the U.S. for people who test positive.

Activists, led by the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project, held signs saying “U.S. Gov- Sex and Drugs Cause AIDS” while chanting “Condoms and needles are under attack.”

In the same session, Gregg Gonsalves, an American HIV+ activist based in South Africa summed up the sentiment of many activists here in Toronto looking back at 25 years of AIDS:

It’s not Bill Gates or Bill Clinton who have made a difference in this epidemic, despite their welcome to this meeting as some sort of royalty. The seduction of the money and power they represent have blinded us to what they’ve really delivered. . . We are at a terrible anti-political moment right now, where the powers that be have taken our rhetoric and told us that everything is fine—we’re on your side—you can demobilize and leave the epidemic to us. That is the pernicious message of this conference. Don’t believe a word they say.