About AIDS

At the Christmas season, gifts are typically thought of as coming from one person or family to another. But in Brazil, the government has launched a program to give what amounts to a Christmas gift of life itself for 90,000 HIV-infected people: free medications.

Brazil has authorized production of generic versions of 12 anti-HIV drugs patented before 1997 and is distributing them for free. The program costs about $4,500 annually per patient (about $405 million total), a fraction of the $12,000 tab for brand-name therapy with the same meds. Not only has the program dramatically improved survival (AIDS has been the No.1 women's killer and No.2 men's killer), it has already saved the government an estimated $472 million by reducing hospitalizations. Thus, the "gift" gives back, substantially paying for itself.

A 1997 Brazilian law allows older medications to be publicly produced as generics. The newest HIV drugs are still made and sold by the big pharmaceutical companies, but the government's HIV drug tab for the poor has dropped 72%.

Predictably, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America has said that Brazil's program is "effectively stealing" their profits, as well as breaking international property laws. Brazil isn't buying that, and indeed, has offered to assist other developing nations in exploring some version of the program. The issues of proprietary drug production, private property, and patent law are complex, especially when weighed against massive human suffering. But for 90,000 impoverished Brazilians otherwise facing AIDS and death, the program must seem like a gift from heaven itself.