SS+IPR+neg+-+Solvency+FL

1. Intellectual property rights are not what is preventing Africans from getting drugs – medical infrastructure and uncorrupt political leaders are needed
Kristine **Novak**, Professor at Sacramento State University, **2003** [“The WTO’s balancing act,” //Nature Reviews Cancer////,// J Clin Invest. 2003 November 1; 112(9): 1269–1273, PubMed] Rein

__So if legal obstacles are not keeping drugs from the world’s poor, what is? Bale cites a lack of infrastructure, doctors and nurses, diagnostics, clean water, and food, as well as political corruption, as factors that prevent access of the majority of the world’s sick people to treatment. Third-world politicians often blame patent restrictions to avoid criticism for their own inability to take care of their own people__, and for their own squandering of resources. According to Bale, “__drugs for malaria, diarrhea diseases, and tuberculosis aren’t even patented, yet many people in developing countries still don’t have access to them__.”

2. Lack of infrastructure and doctors means the medication can’t be distributed or used effectively
Peggy B. **Sherman**, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at Georgia State University, **and** Ellwood F. **Oakley**, III, Associate Professor of Legal Studies at Georgia State University, **2004** [“Pandemics and Panaceas: The World Trade Organization's Efforts to Balance Pharmaceutical Patents and Access to AIDS Drugs,” American Business Law Journal, 41 Am. Bus. L.J. 353, Winter/Spring, Lexis] Rein

__Many African countries lack the infrastructure to distribute the medicines properly, even if available. Portions of many developing nations lack decent roads and transportation systems, electricity, sewage, and clean water__. For example, in South Africa, many rural clinics do not have running [*400] water, electricity, or a reliable supply of medicines. 206 __Twenty percent of the world's population does not have access to safe drinking water and an estimated twenty-five million people die every year from diseases related to the consumption of unsafe water__. 207 In addition, __many developing countries lack the health care infrastructure needed to educate patients about proper usage of a complicated regime of antiretrovirals, and to monitor for the numerous side effects__. 208 __The triple cocktail therapies "require taking a dozen or more pills every day at precise intervals without fail, plus high-tech monitoring for viral resistance, plus still more drugs to control side effects."__ 209 __The type of medical involvement and monitoring required will be very difficult to achieve in developing nations with limited health care infrastructure. There are fewer than three doctors per 10,000 patients in many sub-Saharan countries__. 210 As of March 2001, in South Africa, forty percent of the clinics did not have the means even to offer HIV tests. 211 To illustrate these difficulties, consider the poverty and lack of infrastructure in the small town of Hlabisa, South Africa. In Hlabisa, over sixty percent of the population obtains its drinking water from rivers and rainwater. 212 Dr. Smangaliso Hlengwa is the only private doctor in the village. He says his patients often must choose between buying food or medicine. One patient only managed to pay for a few months of a particular drug before he exhausted his funds and had to stop the regime in midstream. __213 In the local hospital, forty percent of the nursing positions are open, and the staff that is available cannot provide HIV counseling, testing, and__ [*401] __monitoring to the patients they currently have. Physicians and nurses cannot even track whether the tuberculosis patients have completed their sixmonth regimes, let alone track the complicated regimes of AIDS patients on antiretrovirals who must take these pills the remainder of their lives__. 214

3. Multiple barriers and alternate causalities to solving for AIDS
Peggy B. **Sherman**, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at Georgia State University, **and** Ellwood F. **Oakley**, III, Associate Professor of Legal Studies at Georgia State University, **2004** [“Pandemics and Panaceas: The World Trade Organization's Efforts to Balance Pharmaceutical Patents and Access to AIDS Drugs,” American Business Law Journal, 41 Am. Bus. L.J. 353, Winter/Spring, Lexis] Rein

Nevertheless, the AIDS pandemic will not be conquered without significant additional weapons. 254 Practically, those additional weapons will have to be provided as "part of the wider national and international action [*409] to address these problems." 255 As discussed, public __health infrastructures, clean water, and AIDS awareness and education are all required to fight the AIDS pandemic effectively. It will be a difficult task merely to deliver and assure compliance with the complex regimen of anti-AIDS medicines now being used with modest success in the more developed nations. Without development of the public health infrastructure significantly beyond its existing scope, drug delivery will be a frustrating failure for most of those persons currently infected. Each of the components of an AIDS campaign will be expensive, and the world health community will have to be committed to providing the resources to those in need in order to contain the spread of the disease and extend the lives of those currently infected. Making AIDS drugs affordable__ to poor nations is important, but __will not solve the real problem of the epidemic without massive financial support from the world health community, and ultimately from those nations and citizens who have the desire to provide that support voluntarily__. 256

4. Patents are not the key issue – distribution and infrastructure are
code Dr. Harvey E. **Bale** Jr., Director-General of International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufactuerers Associations, **2000** code code Rein code

How important are __price and cost issues__? We firmly believe that they __are secondary or tertiary problems in__ __Africa__ compared to those discussed above. Some have charged that patents for pharmaceutical products reduce access to these products. __This focus on patents__ (and prices) __ignores the complexity of the access to healthcare issue and prevents policy-makers from considering real solutions to this issue__. This is recognized by patient groups and public-sector decision-makers alike. For example, the European Coalition of Positive People publicly stated with regard to HIV/AIDS drugs recently that __focusing on patent protection and pricing is simplistic and fails to take into account the serious practical problems that need to be addressed__& __Drugs could be free and still not be appropriately used without adequate health care systems__. In fact, they would rapidly become ineffective__. The cost of drugs to patients in__ __Africa__ __is determined principally by distribution, infrastructure, training and other factors discussed above. The issues of patents and prices of AIDS drugs are **not the key issues**__.

5. You’re just ignorant – patents are not the reason Africa has disease problems – it’s because they have failed to shift to developed and free societies
[“Drug Patents Are Part of the Cure,” AllAfrica, July 28, http://www.bioportfolio.com/july_05/29_07_2005/Drug_Patents_Are_Part_of_the.html] Rein
 * Kilama**, PhD, Uganda-born president of the Global Bioscience Development Institute, **2005**

ACCESS to medicines is a serious problem in developing countries. Yet __a global campaign that places all the blame on intellectual property rights reflects growing confusion and **ignorance** about this complex issue__. The World Intellectual Property Organisation is meeting this week for a final discussion of a so-called "development agenda", which has been largely predicated on the dubious proposition that intellectual property is to blame for many of the ills in the world. Implementing such an agenda would likely be counterproductive. __Far from improving access to medicine, "reforming" the rules would likely undermine the very foundations of economic growth, while doing nothing to promote long-term access to drugs.__ Among the better models for innovation suggested by opponents of the current system are open-access publishing, open-source software development and increased government funding for research and development. But while patents may not be sufficient to stimulate some forms of basic research, __weakening intellectual property rights will reduce the level of investment in applied research and development, not increase it__. The idea that intellectual property rights restrict access to technologies such as pharmaceuticals is predicated on a misunderstanding of the role it plays in promoting development and prosperity overall. __If people in the poorest nations do not have access to medicines, it has nothing to do with the presumed dark side of intellectual property trying to keep them poor. It is because they have failed to climb aboard the train of economic development. The key to economic development is the presence of the institutions of a free society__: property rights, the rule of law, free markets and limited government. __Explosive rates of innovation have taken place in countries, such as__ __South Korea____,__ __Mexico____,__ __Jordan__ __and__ __Singapore____, which have understood that growth and prosperity can only occur once the institutional framework is in place__. Strong intellectual property rights, administered and enforced in an impartial manner, have been an important part of this framework. As a result, these countries have experienced the growth of "knowledge-based" industries -- to the benefit of all.