Friday, June 16, 2006

WHO Ya Gonna Call. Don't make it WHO


This is wrong on so many levels. Bushco/big pharma. Those two are almost inseperable.
When World Health Organization (WHO) director general Lee Jong-wook died of a cerebral hemorrhage last month before the start of the United Nations agency's annual World Health Assembly, the world's most prominent public-health official was arguably of a conflicted mind.

The WHO veteran was caught in the middle of an intensifying global debate over how to reconcile intellectual-property protection with the pressing public-health need to expand access to expensive life-saving medicines, a hot-button issue that has sharply divided WHO member states along developed- and developing-country lines.

An Asia Times Online investigation reveals that at the time of his death, Lee, a South Korean national, had closely aligned himself with the US government and by association US corporate

interests, often to the detriment of the WHO's most vital commitments and positions, including its current drive to promote the production and marketing of affordable generic antiretroviral drugs for millions of poor infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which can cause AIDS.

According to senior and middle-ranking WHO officials familiar with the situation, Lee blatantly bent to US government pressure in March when he made the controversial decision to recall the WHO country representative to Thailand, William Aldis, who had served less than 16 months in what traditionally has been a four-year or longer posting.

A wrong opinion

Aldis had made the mistake of penning a critical opinion piece in the Bangkok Post newspaper in February that argued in consonance with WHO positions that Thailand should carefully consider before surrendering its sovereign right to produce or import generic life-saving medicines as allowed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in exchange for a bilateral free-trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, which is currently under negotiation.

This isn't new news, but this article gives much more detail than you might know. Being an Asian paper, they're more familiar with the Thailand WHO fiasco.

Its bad enough Bushco can fuck up America, Afganistan and Iraq, but they're able to fuck up any and all countries in the world because they're the rulers of America.

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