Who: ACT UP Philadelphia (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and allies from Oxfam America, Health GAP Coalition, Doctors Without Borders USA, Africa Policy Information Center, Essential Action, and others

When and Where: 12:30 PM on Monday, March 12, 2001 at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), 1100 15th Street NW Washington DC

What: Hundreds of activist in an angry demonstration with 15-foot tall puppet effigies of Big Pharma and of the US Government; "Die-in" planned, decoration of PhRMA with tombstones representing South African people who have died while this lawsuit prevented implementation of law that would increase drug access.

Why: South Africa is ground zero of the global AIDS pandemic, with one in five adults infected. While 4.3 million South Africans with HIV cannot gain access to affordable drugs because industry prices are too expensive, the South African Government is being sued by 39 of the world's biggest drug companies over the South African Medicines Act. The plaintiffs claim the Medicines Act would destroy drug company rights to patent exclusivity in South Africa. Activists and the South African government insist that the Medicines Act is an acceptable and lawful response to a crisis in the Medicines Act is an acceptable and lawful response to a crisis in access that is the direct result of drug company pricing policies. This court case has languished for three years, during which time 400,000 South Africans died of AIDS, but opened before the South African High Court in Pretoria on Monday, March 5.

"Drug companies claim that under the Medicines Act, they we could wake up tomorrow and the patent system would be gone," said Allison Dinsmore of ACT UP Philadelphia and the national HealthGAP Coalition. "But instead, we wake up every morning and 6800 more people have died of AIDS, more than 500 of them in South Africa. The Medicines Act proposes sound and legal public health initiatives to extend lives, not to destroy patents."

On the second day of trial proceedings, drug companies took a blow when the trial judge accepted the amicus curiae ("friend of the court") status of the AIDS activist group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). Drug companies demanded four months to develop a response to the arguments raised by TAC, but the judge refused, granting them only one month instead.

"Big Pharma's stalling would be pathetic if it wasn't so deadly," said John Bell of ACT UP Philadelphia. "They haven't been living under a rock, and the position of people with AIDS hasn't changed for the last three years: high drug prices kill people with AIDS, and remedies such as South Africa's Medicines Act are a crucial antidote to drug company profiteering."

"Merck, Glaxo and the other companies were earnestly telling reporters how much they care about drug access on the same day they had activists with AIDS from NAPWA South Africa thrown in jail when they showed up to deliver a memo to the local offices of PMA." PMA is the South African Pharmaceutical Manufacturer's Association, to which Merck and Glaxo belong. It is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against Nelson Mandela and the government of South Africa. "The memo asked them to drop the lawsuit against the South African Medicines Act. Without that law, those people are dead. These multinational drug companies are stopping at nothing to protect their interests, even if people have to die as a result."

"We expect the next four weeks will be flooded with the drug company spin-masters pleading their case to the American public, their primary market," said Asia Russell of ACT UP. "Already drug company executives like the head of GlaxoSmithKline, JP Garnier, have been smearing the generic industry for not winning Nobel Prizes or inventing new compounds. But generic industry has done what big companies have failed to do-bring affordable, lifesaving medication to people in need. Access to generic AIDS drugs in Brazil, for example, has cut the AIDS death rate in half."

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