Leaks Show Senate Aide Threatened Colombia Over Cheap Cancer Drug
The Intercept
Leaked diplomatic letters sent from Colombia’s Embassy in
Washington describe how a staffer with the Senate Finance Committee,
which is led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, warned of repercussions if
Colombia moves forward on approving the cheaper, generic form of a
cancer drug.
The drug is called imatinib. Its manufacturer, Novartis, markets the drug in Colombia as Glivec. The World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines
last year suggested it as treatment not only for chronic myeloid
leukemia, but also gastrointestinal tumors. Currently, the cost of an
annual supply is over $15,000, or about two times average Colombian’s income.
On April 26,
Colombian Minister of Health Alejandro Gaviria announced plans to take
the first step in a multi-step process that could eventually result in
allowing the generic production of the drug. A generic version of the
drug that recently began production in India is expected to cost 30 percent less than the brand name version.
Andrés Flórez, deputy chief of mission at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C., wrote letters on April 27 and April 28
to Maria Angela Holguin of Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
detailing concerns he had about possible congressional retaliation for
such a move. The letters were obtained by the nonprofit group Knowledge
Ecology International (KEI), which works on drug patent issues. They
were also leaked to Colombian media outlets El Espectador and NoticiasUno.
In the second letter, after a meeting with Senate Finance Committee
International Trade Counsel Everett Eissenstat, Flórez wrote that
Eissenstat said that authorizing the generic version would “violate the
intellectual property rights” of Novartis. Eissenstat also said that if
“the Ministry of Health did not correct this situation, the
pharmaceutical industry in the United States and related interest groups
could become very vocal and interfere with other interests that
Colombia could have in the United States,” according to the letter.
In particular, Flórez expressed a worry that “this case could
jeopardize the approval of the financing of the new initiative ‘Peace
Colombia.’”
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