Amy Kapczynski
Yale AIDS Action Coalition
Yale Law School
127 Wall Street
New Haven CT 06520
April 17, 2001
Mark G. Yudof, President
University of Minnesota
202 MorH
Minneapolis, MN 55455
BY FAX:
Re: University of Minnesota Patent on Abacavir
Dear President Yudof:
The Yale AIDS Action Coalition is a collection of students at Yale
committed to the principle that essential medicines should be affordable
and accessible to all who need them. Our coalition took shape around the
issue of Yale's patent on the anti-HIV drug d4T. We mobilized students,
in cooperation with researchers and union members at Yale, to ensure the
administration responded positively to the request levied by Medicines
Sans Frontieres for patent relief in South Africa. As I'm sure you
are aware, Yale successfully negotiated with Bristol-Meyers Squibb to
ensure that Yale/BMS patents no longer impede access to d4T in
Africa. We await the legal codification of this patent relief, but
believe that the Yale example serves as a strong model for the positive
role that universities can play in this regard.
It is our position that universities, dedicated to the public interest,
have a responsibility to ensure that their research reaches the people
who need it most. The University of Minnesota, as the patent-holder for
abacavir, is in a privileged position to respond to the global AIDS
crisis. It is morally unacceptable that drugs like abacavir are priced
out of the reach of most of the people who need them. It was surely not
the intent of the University, or any of the researchers who worked on
abacavir, to create a drug which serves as a monument to the global
inequalities which perpetuate the AIDS pandemic.
Yale's experience with d4T provides a model for university response to
demands to increase access to essential AIDS medicines. What can be done
at Yale can be done at the University of Minnesota. Whether through
unilateral action, or a bilateral response coordinated with
GlaxoSmithKline, the University can ensure that its patent is not
impeding access in the developing world. We write as a part of the
growing student movement dedicated to the human rights of people living
with AIDS around the world to demand that you do so.
We therefore urge the University to accede to the demands of your own
student body, of treatment activists such as the Treatment Action
Campaign in South Africa, and of humanitarian organizations such as Oxfam
and MSF. This means:
As I am sure you are aware, there is intense public and media interest in
this issue. Yale was thrust into the national spotlight over the question
of access to d4T through prominent stories in the New York Times, the
Guardian (UK) and other newspapers. We are certain that the University of
Minnesota does not wish to replicate this experience, nor become the
target of a national student campaign.
Should you need assistance in developing your response, we would be happy
to help you. I am certain that members of our administration who
negotiated the loosening of Yale's d4T patent would readily discuss their
motivation and strategy with you. To that end, I suggest that you contact
President Richard Levin and the University's General Council, Dorothy
Robinson, who were instrumental to Yale's decision on this matter.
Sincerely,
Amy Kapczynski
Yale AIDS Action Coalition
Cc:
Star Tribune
Yale Daily News
Wall Street Journal