Animal rights, human wrongs

[Guest guest]

Search in The Statesman Web Monday, May 22 2006

 

World Focus

Animal rights, human wrongs

 

NEW VISTAS

Jeremy Seabrook

There has been no outcry in Britain against the threat to AIDS patients in India

over GSK’s patent application, and it warranted only a brief mention in the

Press. This is disturbing since it suggests, not for the first time, that the

people of Britain exhibit a greater tenderness for animals than for human beings

Animal Rights activists have once more become a source of concern in Britain.

Three activists were jailed this month for 12 years for their part in attacks

against a farm which bred guinea-pigs for medical research. About one hundred

people connected to the firm were targeted ~ there were attacks on cars, homes

and businesses. The campaign culminated in the digging up and theft of the

corpse of an elderly relative of the owners of the farm in October 2004. The

activists wrote to the family, stating that the remains would be returned to

them if and when they closed down the farm.

Undeterred by the court sentences, animal rights activists have now threatened

shareholders in GlaxoSmithKline, a British-based pharmaceutical company which is

working in collaboration with Huntingdon life Sciences. HLS has been involved in

animal testing, and was de-listed from the London Stock Exchange as the result

of a programme of intimidation by a group called the Campaign Against Huntingdon

Life Sciences. The shareholders of GSK were told that unless they divested

themselves of their shares within a given time, their names and addresses would

be published on the Internet; with consequences that are all too predictable.

GlaxoSmithKline obtained an emergency injunction against animal rights

activists; and the Prime Minister announced that the law may be changed in order

to protect investor privacy by maintaining confidentiality of the names of

shareholders in companies threatened by violent action.

The chief executive of GSK stated that shareholders had shown courage and

integrity in the presence of threats. He gave a number of media interviews, in

which he spoke of the altruistic and humanitarian intent of his company in the

fight against debilitating illnesses, and the discovery of drugs which have

saved lives. He particularly singled out sufferers from breast cancer who had

benefited from treatments which would never have been available if there had not

been some testing on animals; although he stressed that this was kept to a

necessary minimum and carried out with as much regard for the suffering of

animals as possible.

Now the humanitarian credentials of GSK might be more plausible if the company

had not recently announced that it had applied for patents on drug treatments

for HIV, which would prevent poor countries, particularly India, from producing

generic versions of the same drug at a rate affordable to people in India. In

March 2006, the Lawyers’ Collective filed a pre-grant opposition to GSK’s patent

application at the Indian Patent Office in Kolkata, on behalf of the Indian

Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS.

The drug in question is Combivir, a principal component of AIDS therapy used in

the first-line of treatment. It consists of a fixed-dose combination of two

existing AIDS drugs ~ zidovudine and lamivudine ~ and health activists in India

claim that this since this is not an innovation, it cannot be patented.

Demonstrations in Delhi against the move by GSK, and against Gilead, a

California-based company, led to scores of arrests earlier this month.

Generic versions of Combivir are available in India from companies such as Cipla

and Ranbaxy, and a handful of other Indian manufacturers. The cost is a little

more than 1,000 rupees per month per patient. These are also exported to other

poor countries, where few patients can afford the GSK drug which, in any case,

is not available in India. Indian exports of generic drugs have reduced the

costs of antiretroviral treatment from $15,000 per year per patient to under

$200.

This is a sensitive issue in India at this time. Under the World Trade

Organisation rules, Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

(TRIPS) came into force in India in 2005. Previously, India permitted no patents

on products, only on the processes used to make them. India was awarded a

five-year transitional period to conform to TRIPS, which expired in 2005, when

the new patent law came into force. A GSK spokesperson stated in March 2006 that

the patent would not affect the cost or availability of generic versions already

available in India, since WTO rules contain provision for compulsory licences to

manufacture drugs required for public health reasons.

Critics argue that if GSK patents Combivir, it will gain a monopoly and could

control the price. Even the present product-patent regime in India may require

that manufacturers of copies of Combivir pay a royalty to GSK or other

pharmaceutical companies, so the likelihood of a price rise seems certain.

There has been no outcry in Britain against the threat to AIDS patients in India

over GSK’s patent application, and it warranted only a brief mention in the

Press. This is disturbing since it suggests, not for the first time, that the

people of Britain exhibit a greater tenderness for animals than for human

beings. Although no feeling or thinking person would condone gratuitous cruelty

to animals, it seems extraordinary that we may have become so impervious to

cruelty to human beings, that we are not moved to protest against unnecessary

suffering inflicted upon people, even if these are anonymous sufferers, unknown

to us, in places far from home.

The silence over the possible withdrawal of affordable drugs from the people of

India suggests a declining regard for the welfare of human beings and a growing

attachment to animals who, whatever their faults, are obedient and tractable to

our will, in a way that people are not. It seems that animals have become the

last symbols of hope and innocence, which humanity, in this late, wise and

cynical age, has forfeited.

Nor does GSK come out of the controversy with any great credit. Its claim to be

working for the betterment of human health is seriously questioned by its desire

to enhance its profits, even at the expense of some of the poorest people on

earth. These are not idle or abstract considerations. A friend of mine in India

recently discovered he is HIV+. He earns Rs 6,000 a month, and was reassured to

learn that, as time goes by, with the help of his family, he will be able to

afford the necessary drugs. Is this consolation now to be withheld from him, and

hundreds of thousands like him, all over Asia and Africa?

We are living in strange times, where the rights of human beings are

subordinated to the rights of animals; and where companies which lay claim to be

working for the improvement of human health readily subordinate human well-being

to commerce. If this is an example of “Western values” in action, should we be

astonished if people in other parts of the world look upon our behaviour with a

wondering revulsion?

 

(The author lives in Britain. He has written plays for the stage, TV and radio,

made TV documentaries, published more than 30 books and contributed to leading

journals around the world. email:yrn63)