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ACT UP PROTESTS UNITED NATIONS "BLUEWASHING" PFIZER'S PUBLIC IMAGE DESPITE KILLER PRICE-GOUGING AIDS ACTIVISTS DEMAND LIFE-SAVING AIDS DRUGS FOR POOR COUNTRIES (New York City) Dozens of AIDS Activists from ACT UP New York and other organizations rallied at Pfizer's World Headquarters in midtown today, demanding an end to killer price-gouging of life-saving medicines. The activists chanted and held signs: "Stop Killer Price Gouging; Fluconazole for All" and "Pfizer's Greed Kills; AIDS Drugs for Africa."

Pfizer, the largest drug company in the United States, makes a life-saving AIDS drug called fluconazole (Diflucan). Fluconazole, which brings in more than one billion dollars in sales each year, treats a painful brain infection called Cryptococcal meningitis. Without treatment, the infection kills people with AIDS in two months. About 10% of the 34 million people with HIV worldwide will develop this brain infection.

In South Africa, where 4.5 million people have HIV, no one can afford Pfizer¹s killer prices. AIDS activists in South Africa and the United States have been demanding that Pfizer drop the price or allow generic production of the drug. In South Africa, Pfizer¹s patent means that even the government must pay $4.15 per pill, while in Thailand, where Pfizer does not have a patent on fluconazole, the drug is only $0.29 per pill. In Kenya, where Pfizer also has exclusive rights, fluconazole costs $18.00 per pill‹more expensive, even, than U.S. prices.

"Pfizer's greed has long guaranteed millions of preventable deaths around the globe, in South Africa, in Guatemala, in Kenya, and every other poor country where Pfizer maintains exclusive marketing rights for fluconazole," said Ann Northrop, ACT UP New York member. "People with AIDS must not be sacrificed for the sake of Pfizer1s gross profits."

In April, Pfizer responded to a high-pressure campaign by activists in the United States and South Africa by agreeing to provide its anti-fungal drug free to HIV positive South Africans with cryptococcal meningitis, an otherwise fatal brain infection. So far, the company has failed to answer similar requests from Nicaragua and other Central American countries, where an estimated 30,000 HIV positive individuals have limited access to essential medicines. Uganda has also asked for a sustainable access program.

In July, at the international AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a grass-roots AIDS organization in South Africa, announced it would commence legal action against Pfizer in the South African courts in order to obtain a license to produce and sell a generic version of Diflucan.

UNITED NATIONS EXCUSES PFIZER'S PRICE-GOUGING

In an unprecedented resolution, the United Nations Subcommission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights recently declared the WTO¹s rules on pharmaceutical patents conflicts with human rights. The resolution states that there are "apparent conflicts between the intellectual property rights regime embodied in the [WTO rules], on the one hand, and international human rights law, on the other." "The regulations effectively cripple efforts by developing countries to provide life-saving medicines in the face of widespread diseases," said ACT UP New York member Kate Barnhart.

However, in a contradictory move by the UN, Pfizer is one of 50 companies the Secretary-General Kofi Annan has invited to join in a "global compact." This agreement allows the corporations to use the UN emblem in return for pledging to uphold human rights principles on labor and environmental protection. But a letter signed by 20 nongovernmental organizations has charged that the compact, which lacks any enforcement mechanism, allows corporations - many of them flagrant polluters and sweatshop operators ‹ to "wrap themselves in the flag of the UN in order to Œbluewash¹ their public image while at the same time avoiding significant changes to their behavior."

"Pfizer should not get a free ride from the UN while its pricing policies are killing hundreds of thousands worldwide," said John Riley of ACT UP New York.

Speaking at the rally was Dennis Brutus, Poet Laureate and South African former political prisoner on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. Brutus, who is currently a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and works with Alliance of Global Justice, addressed the crowd: "We need to challenge the "global compact" of the United Nations and the Corporations. While the UN is supposed to protect and serve human rights, the priority of the corporations is profit and not people. They are willing to allow people to die in order to protect profits. This is why we must fight."

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