This legislation is not doing that as it stands because, as we were saying, there's been only one use of it, and that has been for an AIDS drug to one country. So we can't say this legislation is doing anything. This legislation could do something, because the legislation, as it stands now, is not limited to only AIDS drugs. It's really important to underline that, because this was an issue that was central in the WTO negotiations that led to the instrument that then led to CAMR.
There was a real effort by the U.S. and the European Union to say we're going to come up with a flexible mechanism so that you can export generic drugs to countries that need them, but there was a real push by them to say this is going to be only for HIV, TB and malaria, and possibly for other epidemics.
There was a really strong push-back, quite rightly, because what are we going to say then--“You're not dying of the right disease, so therefore too bad”? Are we going to say, for example, “We can get those medicines for cancer in the rich world, but we're only going to get AIDS medicines to you folks in the poor world?” That was simply unacceptable, and it is unacceptable. So at the end, the agreement among all WTO members was that this mechanism could be used to deal with public health problems.
They make explicit reference to HIV, TB, and malaria, because they are three big killers, but it's very clear that it's not limited to those diseases. And the current legislation is not limited to those diseases, although in practice it's actually hard to use it for anything else, which is one of the reasons there's a reform proposed that would make it easier for it to apply to drugs to deal with public health problems, because that reflects what the WTO intention was.