The Yale AIDS Action Coalition is a collection of students at Yale committed to the principle that essential medicines should be affordable and accessible to all who need them. Our coalition took shape around the issue of Yale¹s patent on the anti-HIV drug d4T. We mobilized students, in cooperation with researchers and union members at Yale, to ensure the administration responded positively to the request levied by Médecins Sans Frontières for patent relief in South Africa. As I¹m sure you are aware, Yale successfully negotiated with Bristol-Meyers Squibb to ensure that Yale/BMS patents no longer impede access to d4T in Africa. We await the legal codification of this patent relief, but believe that the Yale example serves as a strong model for the positive role that universities can play in this regard.
It is our position that universities, dedicated to the public interest, have a responsibility to ensure that their research reaches the people who need it most. The University of Minnesota, as the patent-holder for abacavir, is in a privileged position to respond to the global AIDS crisis. It is morally unacceptable that drugs like abacavir are priced out of the reach of most of the people who need them. It was surely not the intent of the University, or any of the researchers who worked on abacavir, to create a drug which serves as a monument to the global inequalities which perpetuate the AIDS pandemic.
Yale¹s experience with d4T provides a model for university response to demands to increase access to essential AIDS medicines. What can be done at Yale can be done at the University of Minnesota. Whether through unilateral action, or a bilateral response coordinated with GlaxoSmithKline, the University can ensure that its patent is not impeding access in the developing world. We write as a part of the growing student movement dedicated to the human rights of people living with AIDS around the world to demand that you do so.
We therefore urge the University to accede to the demands of your own student body, of treatment activists such as the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, and of humanitarian organizations such as Oxfam and MSF. This means:
- Permitting generic versions of abacavir to be produced, imported, and distributed throughout the developing world. Should you believe that you cannot act unilaterally, you should provide an explication of the specific legal agreement and language that you believe constrains you. You should also pressure GlaxoSmithKline to cooperate fully with you in this matter.
- Stating publicly that you are unconditionally opposed to the application of legal pressure on any government or generic company wishing to make medicine accessible to people with HIV/AIDS at affordable prices.
- Publicly urging GlaxoSmithKline to withdraw from the lawsuit against the South African government over section 15(c) of the South African Medicines Act.
As I am sure you are aware, there is intense public and media interest in this issue. Yale was thrust into the national spotlight over the question of access to d4T through prominent stories in the New York Times, the Guardian (UK) and other newspapers. We are certain that the University of Minnesota does not wish to replicate this experience, nor become the target of a national student campaign.
Should you need assistance in developing your response, we would be happy to help you. I am certain that members of our administration who negotiated the loosening of Yale¹s d4T patent would readily discuss their motivation and strategy with you. To that end, I suggest that you contact President Richard Levin and the University¹s General Council, Dorothy Robinson, who were instrumental to Yale¹s decision on this matter.
Sincerely,
Amy Kapczynski
Yale AIDS Action Coalition
email: ank8@ank8.mail.yale.edu
Cc:
Minnesota Daily
Star Tribune
Yale Daily News
Wall Street Journal