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00:00:29How are you? This is Jorge Gestoso, in today's
00:00:33program, the Industrial Pharmaceutical model,
00:00:36with another notable guest, Jennifer
00:00:39Cardona Malaber, coordinator of the People's
00:00:42Health Movement, directly
00:00:46from Bogotá, Jennifer Cardona Malaber, a warm
00:00:50welcome to the program, cordial greetings, how
00:00:52are you, very well, Jennifer, to what
00:00:56extent is the industrial pharmaceutical model not?
00:01:00It's nothing more than a business that revolves
00:01:03industry works and the way around what you have Jennifer, you are in the called
00:01:06"diseaseology," generally medicines
00:01:09and health technologies in
00:01:13general have
00:01:15been routed in that way of being a business that profits the
00:01:19large pharmaceutical
00:01:20even the resources of industry and therefore what interests
00:01:23them is to continue feeding health
00:01:26systems and health in terms of illness. But they are
00:01:30not interested in curing anything, they are interested in alleviating and
00:01:33sustaining some symptoms of
00:01:36individual people and that's why
00:01:40the large pharmaceutical industry
00:01:43feeds every day
00:01:46on it. It
00:01:50makes the medicines, the same
00:01:52medicines that have been used for
00:01:55high cost, and that a long time, currently be developed with
00:01:58other types of more advanced technologies with the same
00:02:01effects, with the same components, but they
00:02:05call them biotechnological medicines and what
00:02:08it does is make them more expensive medicines, but not with
00:02:11that synchronicity or that purpose of curing
00:02:17this year, in the a disease or treating a medical diagnosis, but of continuing
00:02:20to profit and fatten the
00:02:23pockets of the people who own these
00:02:26multinationals. And who decides which medicine
00:02:30to develop? The large pharmaceutical industry is the one that
00:02:34decides which medicines are developed, but here the most
00:02:37important thing is which medicines are not
00:02:40developed or which medicines are not
00:02:43of interest to certain actors to enter
00:02:46the market. For example, here they have waged a
00:02:49war against generic medicines, which
00:02:53are much more affordable medicines for
00:02:56people's pockets and that have the same
00:03:00model? Yes, from the direct effect, but since they do not generate the desired
00:03:04profitability, what they do is create
00:03:07a whole scenario to prevent them from being produced, especially in countries that
00:03:10have health sovereignty, that produce their own medicines
00:03:14and health technologies, they prevent
00:03:18that, through lobbying and the scenarios of
00:03:21power relations that they also have, and what is
00:03:25a pharmaceutical patent?
00:03:28Well, a pharmaceutical
00:03:30100% of what patent is a legal
00:03:34mechanism that establishes that
00:03:37the guidelines of a state temporarily grants the right or
00:03:39exclusivity over an invention that meets certain requirements,
00:03:43in this case, on medicines or
00:03:46on let's say health
00:03:49technologies, specifically we are talking about active ingredients,
00:03:53the compositions of medicines, the manufacturing
00:03:57processes of the formulas.
00:04:00of other technological
00:04:02innovations, so ultimately it is a process
00:04:06that establishes the relationship between knowledge, the
00:04:09knowledge of producing a certain medicine or health
00:04:12technology, property and who has
00:04:15access to it and who does not. Critics say
00:04:18that through patents,
00:04:22development, and precisely you were talking about there is actually a huge transfer of resources from the global
00:04:25South to the global North. Do you agree?
00:04:29Absolutely. I agree because precisely what
00:04:32they have done is deny the
00:04:36involved in medicine, possibility for people to access medicines at lower costs and
00:04:40much more easily. We have the case of medicines
00:04:44for example for HIV/AIDS, which are
00:04:47medicines that
00:04:50are of public health interest, that is, there is an
00:04:53urgent need for many, for a considerable
00:04:56number of the population to access these medicines.
00:05:00But due to the denial of that patent to states, it makes
00:05:04the costs much higher
00:05:07and the bureaucratic procedures to access those
00:05:11medicines either much more complicated, in
00:05:14the particular case of some
00:05:17rare
00:05:19diseases, quote-unquote rare diseases that can develop
00:05:23in remote places, Africa, in some corners of
00:05:26Latin America, where they affect a
00:05:30supposedly limited group of
00:05:34people, definitely
00:05:37it can be said that this industrial
00:05:41pharmaceutical industry
00:05:43is not interested because in reality, quote-unquote, there is no
00:05:47market to make it profitable,
00:05:51exactly, but here it is also necessary to mention that
00:05:55within, for example, chronic diseases
00:05:59or certain critical
00:06:02diseases where the business primarily
00:06:05lies, we are not only talking about obstacles
00:06:09and barriers to accessing medicines
00:06:12in an equitable, just, affordable
00:06:16way in financial terms, but
00:06:18even about barriers to
00:06:22prior procedures of what is
00:06:25researched, how it is researched, who benefits from certain types
00:06:29of research, so
00:06:33multinationals are also allocated there
00:06:36to what knowledge
00:06:39and commercialization processes
00:06:42can be generated in certain countries, well, precisely
00:06:46the other side of the coin, what these large
00:06:48pharmaceutical
00:06:51complexes argue
00:06:54is that they spend years
00:06:57even trying to develop a
00:07:00vaccine or a medicine at a
00:07:03very high or extremely
00:07:08when they put it on sale, they have to start recovering that investment that
00:07:11took a long time and a lot of money, and that if in the
00:07:15global South they want to produce that
00:07:19medicine generically, it is
00:07:22absolutely, according to them,
00:07:25unfair, because in reality they have done
00:07:28absolutely nothing for that medicine or vaccine
00:07:32to exist, and they have invested all that
00:07:35money, therefore they justify
00:07:39that it is extremely expensive or...
00:07:42or inaccessible for a large part of the world's
00:07:45population. How do you react to that argument? That is
00:07:49totally fallacious, because
00:07:52really the budget used to produce a vaccine
00:07:55is recovered very quickly or even many times those
00:07:59research processes have two
00:08:03routes: first, they are mostly processes that have been
00:08:06financed by state governments
00:08:09and on the other hand, they tend
00:08:12to be research and development processes for vaccines that tend
00:08:16to be very economical. Let's talk, for example, about the case of the
00:08:20COVID-19 vaccine. The COVID-19 vaccine, first
00:08:24it was a process of a technological
00:08:27development process that was extremely
00:08:31economical, for one dollar or less than one dollar per
00:08:34vaccine, but the price that was being charged to each
00:08:37country for a vaccine was
00:08:42a vaccine really cost, and on the other
00:08:46hand, we also have
00:08:49the World Health Organization where
00:08:52it has precisely tried
00:08:55to regulate access to certain patents that
00:08:59are of public health interest and that therefore
00:09:01should first have their
00:09:04budget lowered and second
00:09:07have their access facilitated
00:09:10in a legal and normative way so
00:09:13that the country can produce this
00:09:17vaccine. So it is not so true that the
00:09:20high costs of vaccines occur because they
00:09:23have a pharmaceutical industry, the large pharmaceutical industry has
00:09:27to recover the value of the research
00:09:31process and technological
00:09:34the COVID vaccine and it is the
00:09:38case that many analysts point
00:09:42out that it is clearly a political
00:09:44issue, that is, politics
00:09:48that we have the issue that
00:09:52Cubans during the pandemic
00:09:56developed a vaccine against
00:09:59COVID, but they could not present
00:10:02it to the World Health Organization
00:10:05because the main, let's say,
00:10:08donor was the United States and ultimately
00:10:12made its influence felt in that organization and therefore it
00:10:16could never reach global approval, meaning
00:10:19that politics also plays a role in
00:10:23medicines and vaccines. Of course,
00:10:27of course, health in general, not
00:10:30only in this niche of medicines, but in general, is
00:10:33mediated by the way international
00:10:37geopolitics behaves,
00:10:40which we call, those of us who are in this
00:10:43more critical field, health geopolitics, but
00:10:47also it is mediated by the power relations
00:10:51that exist between the countries that are badly
00:10:54called third world countries, over the countries of the
00:10:57third world and with those dynamics and those power relations,
00:11:01ultimately they also control human life,
00:11:05because they are interested in having people, ultimately sick with little
00:11:08capacity for criticism and to mobilize before other
00:11:12scenarios, it becomes a facade, in short, to
00:11:15be able to turn
00:11:19people into submissive, this generates controversy
00:11:23to say it this way, but ultimately that's how the
00:11:28they instrumentalize and objectify people.
00:11:32There is a documented case that I bring to your attention,
00:11:36but it became public,
00:11:39that during precisely the
00:11:43COVID pandemic, President Jair Bolsonaro, who was not
00:11:46exactly the most leftist of presidents, but
00:11:50rather an ultra-rightist, the only vaccine he
00:11:53managed to buy first was the Russian
00:11:56vaccine. Immediately within
00:11:59the United States, the Department of Health communicated
00:12:03through a statement to what
00:12:06had to do with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to the
00:12:10chancellery, that the purchase
00:12:13of that vaccine from the Russians by
00:12:17Brazil caused Russia
00:12:20to gain influence within the life of
00:12:23Brazil and within the life of Latin America, therefore,
00:12:27listen to this, therefore, it became
00:12:30a threat to the national security of the United
00:12:34States, that purchase. This means that politics
00:12:37is still very much present everywhere, of course,
00:12:41it doesn't work that way as they wanted
00:12:44to sell it to us during COVID, that some vaccines from countries
00:12:48like Russia, like Cuba,
00:12:51did have interference in the
00:12:54economic and political decisions of certain countries,
00:12:57while the vaccines produced in other governments did not. That
00:13:01doesn't work that way, but we are ultimately
00:13:05talking about a medicalization of
00:13:08life where
00:13:11precisely medicines are
00:13:14used and this whole conception or this
00:13:18logic that medicine is the savior is used,
00:13:21and individually without considering other
00:13:25criteria and other processes that are determinant
00:13:28such as the socioeconomic conditions of people.
00:13:31So in reality, what we are
00:13:34saying here is how with
00:13:37medicines, of course, exercises of domination
00:13:41are generated over people, but individually and over
00:13:44countries since they cannot effectively
00:13:47and economically
00:13:50access certain
00:13:53medicines and health technologies, but it goes much
00:13:57further than that, it's not only medicines, it's the relationships
00:14:01that are woven behind them, that are
00:14:04crossed, the agreements that are generated between countries
00:14:07and the actors that are part of that large
00:14:11pharmaceutical industry, that is, the lobbying that
00:14:15is generated, that is, there is a medical-industrial
00:14:17complex, so to speak, that
00:14:21goes much further and that deserves a more
00:14:25in-depth analysis. Jennifer, I invite you to take a short
00:14:28break. We are talking with Jennifer Cardona
00:14:31Malaber, directly from
00:14:34Colombia. Jennifer is coordinator of the People's
00:14:38Health Movement of Colombia. We are talking
00:14:41about the pharmaceutical and
00:14:44precisely the industrial
00:14:47pharmaceutical model. We'll be
00:14:50right back.
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00:16:35We continue talking with Jennifer,
00:16:37directly from Bogotá. Jennifer
00:16:41is coordinator of the People's Health Movement
00:16:44of Colombia. We are talking about the industrial
00:16:48pharmaceutical model and how
00:16:50you qualify the situation in Colombia regarding all
00:16:54of this. In Colombia it has been very critical
00:16:57because during the last
00:17:004 years we had our first progressive
00:17:03government that tried
00:17:06to make structural transformations to the
00:17:09health system, but precisely the power
00:17:12relations, when I talk about power relations, I talk in
00:17:16political, economic, social,
00:17:19even military terms, that
00:17:22intertwine, make those changes impossible
00:17:25and those powers of the
00:17:29private sector actors who are
00:17:31intermediaries, for example, right now in this case, the global
00:17:35pharmaceutical industry, the pharmaceutical managers, as we call
00:17:39them here, who are outside
00:17:42of the institutions, play a whole lobbying
00:17:46scenario and other strategies to
00:17:49make those changes impossible, and
00:17:54electoral moment, what they did was recreate a whole
00:17:58crisis around a supposed shortage of
00:18:01medicines in order not to deliver the
00:18:05medicines that people
00:18:07needed, especially those with chronic diseases and
00:18:10critical diseases, but sometime later,
00:18:14the general public realized that the
00:18:18medicines were available and were stored in warehouses
00:18:21by those private actors, so there we see how
00:18:25medicines are also used to manipulate people
00:18:28and create a whole crisis scenario. Is there an
00:18:32alternative to this situation of the industrial
00:18:35pharmaceutical
00:18:38People's Health Movement, we have been
00:18:41precisely encouraging a global
00:18:44campaign of public pharma
00:18:48and health sovereignty that
00:18:51seeks to accompany governments,
00:18:54mainly different actors, for example,
00:18:57universities, researchers, and society
00:19:00in general, so that they can enhance their knowledge
00:19:04and develop their capabilities in terms of research,
00:19:07production, and distribution of health technologies,
00:19:11and that from there we can articulate ourselves among the
00:19:14countries that have been called the global South
00:19:18in order not to depend 100% on the global
00:19:21North countries and that large global pharmaceutical industry.
00:19:25So with the development of these capabilities, the
00:19:29countries of the global South can set their own
00:19:32rules, they do not need the authorization of patents
00:19:35from
00:19:37those actors who dominate this
00:19:41scenario, and even recognizing the characteristics
00:19:44and particularities of some countries of the global South, for
00:19:48example, like Colombia, it would also include a recognition
00:19:52of what ancestral medicines are.
00:19:54Now, in the case of Colombia, where the
00:19:58hegemonic media are in the hands of a very
00:20:02minority group, a business, financial,
00:20:06commercial group of the large companies, even
00:20:10international ones, those groups that
00:20:13control the mainstream media in Colombia,
00:20:16when you tell us that there is an alternative and you
00:20:20just told us how that alternative
00:20:24is focused, do they give them a platform
00:20:28to expose this or do they continue
00:20:31to use the power of the media to maintain
00:20:35the status quo? Well, the media... Right now, with the arrival of the
00:20:38current government, the media invisibilizes
00:20:42a bit all these dynamics,
00:20:45let's say, intentionalities that exist
00:20:49around strengthening health sovereignty in the
00:20:52country. However, on the one hand, we must acknowledge the efforts
00:20:56of the previous government to precisely
00:20:58ensure that Colombia recovers, because we had
00:21:02the capacity to produce vaccines and medicines more than
00:21:0510 years ago, and due to governmental decisions,
00:21:08we lost them. But again, different
00:21:11proposals and alternatives began to be financed, such
00:21:15as the University of Antioquia, which is already producing more than
00:21:18four medicines.
00:21:21It launched the first batches at the beginning
00:21:24of this year, and linked to that,
00:21:28we also have more local strategies that, of course, can no
00:21:32longer articulate with the institutional, due to the
00:21:35government we currently have, but that the community itself
00:21:39seeks to surround it and be able
00:21:42to take advantage of these alternatives in the face of the
00:21:46barriers that exist to access what the
00:21:49health system offers. And finally,
00:21:52People's Health Movement of Colombia, is it
00:21:56difficult to get funds to fight against
00:21:59this structure of what is the industrial
00:22:02pharmaceutical model? At this moment, yes, at
00:22:06this moment it is difficult because of the precisely international
00:22:09geopolitical landscape where there is an advance of fascist
00:22:13governments
00:22:16and on the other hand there is a defunding of
00:22:20non-profit organizations,
00:22:24other, let's say, other actors of civil
00:22:27society who are much broader and who are the ones
00:22:31who usually finance these types of initiatives, so
00:22:34it is difficult for the measures
00:22:37to be invisibilized a bit
00:22:41and tied up a bit, but the work continues,
00:22:44especially in terms of political advocacy, legislative
00:22:47advocacy, and other scenarios. Jennifer Cardona
00:22:51Malaber, thank you very much for being with us,
00:22:54thank you very much for the invitation.
00:30:38Since Donald Trump's return, the White House of the United States has
00:30:42turned tariffs into a political pressure
00:30:46instrument, a weapon. The measures against Mexico, Canada, China
00:30:49and Brazil have opened a new stage of commercial tensions on the
00:30:53continent. Canada responded eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, with tariffs
00:30:57on hundreds of American products.