a new kind of drug war

This is so not my project, but I find it fascinating: Abbott Pharmaceuticals are suing ACT-UP Paris for a 'netstrike' they organised at the end of April. (ACT-UP and its affiliates have been the heavies of AIDS activism for more than twenty years now. ACT-UP, for example, took over the FDA in 1988.) Anyway, ACT-UP Paris organised the 'netstrike' (or what the Chicago Tribune calls a 'cyber-attack') in response to Abbott's policy towards Thailand. Oh, god, this is hard to boil down... Forgive me if I get a bit catechismic, stylistically.

OK, so Thailand can, under the amendments to the TRIPS (trade-related aspects of international property rights) laws, issue compulsory licenses. In response to the Thai government having done so, Abbott announced that it would not register a new heat-stable formulation of one of its antiretroviral drugs in Thailand. This provoked a lot of outcry, a lot of very public positioning by Abbott, the Thai government, the US government (including the office of the US Trade Representative, which is responsible for assembling a 'watch list' for countries not abiding by the principles of TRIPS, for example and therefore susceptible to some kind of trade sanctions, etc.).

Here's what ACT-UP Paris says about it, en anglais et en français. Read about it in the Tribune.

But that a legal suit is coming down to a whole lot of people having visited Abbott's website on the same day is fodder for the media and social movement scholars out there. But: wow... just...wow.