[Letter to numerous pharmaceutical companies from Asia Russell, Mark Harrington, Gregg Gonsalves]

While a slim minority of people with HIV in wealthy countries reap the life extending benefits of
overpriced HIV medications, 90 percent of the world's 36 million people with HIV have absolutely no
hope of anything beyond a death sentence, including virtually all of the 4.3 million people with HIV
living in South Africa. But companies-including yours-claim they are doing enough to increase HIV
drug access for the tens of millions of people who have no access to HIV treatment.
For example, the much-hyped UN/drug company HIV medication price reduction initiative, touted by
industry as a far reaching, innovative program, has been roundly criticized as moving too slowly,
subjecting individual countries to prolonged imbalanced negotiations, and having an unacceptably
narrow impact. You and the other 41 plaintiffs in this case are preventing South Africa from
implementing its domestic plan to end inequity in medication access. Battling the extraordinary
devastation wreaked by the AIDS crisis requires many strategies and modes of attack-not only industrycontrolled charity programs.
We do not claim that affordable drugs are a panacea in the fight to end the global AIDS crisis. But truly
affordable medication is the foundation of any meaningful effort that will actually save lives.
The shameful three-year battle by your company and the other plaintiffs is a wholehearted effort to
ensure that medication is denied to those who need it most. This lawsuit stands squarely in the path of
South Africans, as well as millions from other countries who are closly watching this precendent-setting
case and who are desperately seeking access to life extending, affordable medication. You have a
choice: unless you take action and remove yourself from the lawsuit, you will be known forever as the
company who sued to prevent the South African government from daring to increase the availability of
life-extending medication for its citizens. Your lawsuit directly threatens the lives of millions. We
therefore call on you to withdraw from the PMA of South Africa lawsuit without further delay.
Sincerely,
Asia Russell, Health GAP Coalition, USA
Mark Harrington, Senior Policy Director, Treatment Action Group (TAG), New York, NY
Gregg Gonsalves, Treatment Advocacy Director, Gay Men's Health Crisis, New York, NY
AIDS Action, Washington, DC
American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), USA
Project Inform, San Francisco, CA
ACT UP Paris, France
ACT UP New York, NY
ACT UP Philadelphia, PA
ACT UP East Bay, Oakland, CA
Survive AIDS (formerly ACT UP Golden Gate), San Francisco, CA
ACT UP Cleveland
Latino Commission on AIDS, New York, NY
VIVO POSITIVO, National Coordinating Committee of PWAs, Santiago, Chile
Alternative Information & Development Center (AIDC), Cape Town, South Africa
Associaci6n Agua Buena, San Jose, Costa Rica
Colombian Lesbian and Gay Association, New York, NY
Canadian Treatment Advocates Council, Toronto, Canada
Salih Booker, Executive Director, Mfrica Policy Information Center (APIC), Washington, D.C.
Africa Fund/American Committee on Africa, New York, NY
Donna Rae Palmer, Director, Mobilization Against AIDS, San Francisco, CA
David Scondras, Director, Search for a Cure, Boston, MA

Julie Davids, Director, Critical Path AIDS Project, Philadelphia, PA