BANGKOK, Thailand — Tempers flared here Tuesday as France accused the United States of trying to blackmail small countries such as Thailand into upholding patents on anti-AIDS drugs.
Protesters shouted down speakers and drug company representatives as the few U.S. representatives here tried to defend President Bush's proposed $15-billion program against the disease.
The large exhibition center, which has been bustling with the 17,000 attendees at the 15th International AIDS Conference, was more subdued Tuesday after five major drug companies -- Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo- SmithKline, Merck, Abbott Laboratories and Roche Group, by far the largest exhibitors at the meeting -- closed their booths in the face of hecklers protesting the high prices of brand-name drugs.
Meanwhile, the scientific results that were the cornerstone of the 14 previous AIDS conferences have been largely absent as attendees have turned their attention to getting the drugs already available to larger numbers of people.
Since the last conference, in Barcelona, Spain, two years ago, the number of people in the Third World receiving treatment for HIV infection has doubled but is still only 440,000, a far cry from UNAIDS' goal of 3 million in treatment by the end of next year. UNAIDS estimates that 6 million people are in urgent need of antiretroviral therapy.
"By these measures of human life, the ones that really matter, we have failed. And we have failed miserably to do enough in the precious time that has passed since Barcelona," said Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the World Health Organization's director of HIV and AIDS programs.
Much of the progress in treatment has occurred because some countries -- notably Brazil, Thailand and India -- have begun manufacturing copies of drugs developed by large pharmaceutical countries. The World Trade Organization sanctioned the process last year, affirming that countries could declare drug patents invalid in times of health crises.
But critics charge that the United States is trying to work around the WTO agreement, which it signed, by negotiating free-trade agreements with individual countries that would extend drug patents while promoting trade.
In a statement read here Tuesday, French President Jacques Chirac said forcing countries "to drop these measures in the framework of bilateral trade negotiations would be tantamount to blackmail. We should implement the [WTO] generic-drug agreement to consolidate price reductions.... What is the point of starting treatment without any guarantee of having quality and affordable drugs in the long term?"
