US Official Defends Controversial AIDS Drug Policy

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The altruism of the Bush administration is unbelievable.In every sense of the wordUS Official Defends Controversial AIDS Drug PolicyWed Mar 31, 6:09 PM ETBy Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. official on Wednesday denied charges that the United States supports pharmaceutical giants in a dispute over whether the government should help provide cheaper generic AIDS (news - web sites) drugs.

"What we are looking to do is not to avoid buying generics but to assure the quality, safety and efficacy of them," said John Lange, deputy to U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias. Lange said the United States was mainly concerned that much cheaper versions of the drugs made by two Indian companies may end up doing more harm than good if they are widely distributed. AIDS activist groups, the international relief group Doctors Without Borders (news - web sites) and some members of Congress have accused the U.S. government of reacting to pressure from companies that make expensive, brand-name HIV (news - web sites) drugs. Lange told a meeting organized by the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS and the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington that he expected the dispute to be resolved soon. "This is a big issue and it could undermine all the good work we are doing," said Richard Holbrooke, chief executive officer of the business coalition. "Fairly or not, it is going to become a symbol that the United States is protecting" pharmaceutical companies. At issue are the drug cocktails that allow patients infected with the AIDS virus to lead healthy lives. The World Health Organization (news - web sites) and Doctors Without Borders, more commonly known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, are distributing less expensive versions made by two Indian companies -- Cipla Ltd. and Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. -- that combine the cocktails into single pills. The United States organized a meeting in Botswana this week to discuss whether U.S. AIDS programs should also distribute them. Lange said the meeting reached no conclusions and said it may be difficult to assess whether the less expensive combinations controlled the AIDS virus without allowing it to evolve at low levels and eventually develop resistance to the drugs. "If we were to purchase antiretroviral drugs that do not meet quality standards, they could build up resistance and do more harm than good," Lange told the conference. He said the U.S. government would commit to the lowest-cost drugs available that met standards of quality. "We don't have the data. We are going as fast as we can," Lange said. "Normally one looks to stringent regulatory authority," he added. But in this case the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) had no jurisdiction, and he said the WHO was not a regulatory body.http://story.news./news?tmpl=story & u=/nm/20040331/hl_nm/aids_drugs_dc_1