Robert Weissman

About the author: Robert Weissman is editor of Multinational Monitor magazine and codirector of Essential Action, a corporate accountability group. He also is coauthor of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for Megaprofits and the Attack on Democracy.

The United States government and U.S. pharmaceutical companies have actively opposed efforts by developing countries to make life-saving AIDS drugs more affordable and available in their countries. The efforts of these developing countries involve compulsory licensing and parallel importing, two ways of making AIDS drugs more affordable. Compulsory licensing would allow an African pharmaceutical company to manufacture a brandname AIDS drug originally developed by a U.S. firm under a generic...