DUTCH WAY OF DEATH

San Francisco Chronicle: The ink had not yet dried on a new Dutch law legalizing doctor-assisted suicide before the specter of an expanded euthanasia industry began to blossom like a deadly nightshade.
Last week, the Dutch parliament made the Netherlands the first nation to fully legalize suicide for chronically sick patients and to give immunity to physicians who help them die.
When the law takes effect in the fall, doctors will be able to euthanize sick children as young as 12, if the kids ask and the parents agree.
Dutch Health Minister Els Borst, who sponsored the law, now is urging the government to allow doctors to prescribe suicide pills for old people who are simply tired of life, even if they are healthy.
A similar bill is working its way through the Belgian Parliament.
Half a world away, an enterprising Australian physician plans to register a ship under the Dutch flag and cruise international waters as a floating suicide clinic.
Slippery slope: The Dutch assisted-suicide law is a giant step onto a slippery slope certain to cheapen the value of life, especially the lives of the incurably sick, elderly, disabled, mentally ill, imperfect infants and others who are inconvenient or expensive to keep alive.
Discreetly practiced, euthanasia has been accepted in the Netherlands for nearly 30 years. It is estimated that Dutch doctors conduct about 5,000 mercy killings a year; few physicians have been prosecuted.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the Constitution does not include a right to die with medical help, and left the matter to the states. Oregon is the only state to have legalized physician-assisted suicide, and the issue is passionately controversial there.
Among the outspoken opponents of assisted dying are disability rights advocates, who claim that euthanasia would inevitably be aimed at society's poorest, weakest and most inconvenient members.
TO COPY AN AIDS DRUG
Toronto Globe and Mail: Anxiety about short-term profits was not the chief reason the world's leading drug manufacturers launched their now-abandoned lawsuit in South Africa, where they had sought a ban on the importation of generic AIDS drugs. The entire continent, home to roughly two-thirds of the world's 35 million HIV-positive cases, accounts for only 5 percent of the brand-name market in the powerful, expensive drugs that can slow the progress of AIDS.
Rather, the 39 drug firms feared a far wider erosion of their drug-patent rights, permitting cut-rate medicines to flood the world. Will that now happen? It appears not.
By dropping their lawsuit against South Africa's 1997 Medicines Act, which permits the importation and production of no-name AIDS drugs, the corporations have almost certainly averted a major public-relations disaster. Almost 5 million South Africans have the AIDS virus -- one person in eight -- and most are unable to pay for the brand-name products. Had the litigation proceeded, the accusations of caring more about profits than about dying people would have been deafening.
Similar suits: Now those same companies must deal with similar suits they have filed in India, Brazil, Thailand and the Dominican Republic, all of which produce or import cheap, generic AIDS drugs. They may have to yield in those countries, too. Then what? Do the floodgates open in the far more lucrative markets of North America, Europe and Japan?
Not necessarily, and the reason is found in international patent law, embodied in the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights.
Under that law, which all the world's rich countries have signed, patents must be respected. But in the case of generic drugs, the language contains an escape clause: Countries are allowed to import or produce such drugs in case of "an emergency." Precisely what constitutes "an emergency" is not defined, but South Africa clearly qualifies, as would Zimbabwe, Haiti and possibly India and Thailand.
However, the same scarcely applies to any of the rich countries, which collectively account for the bulk of an AIDS-drug industry worth more than $4 billion a year. In those nations, patent law is likely to prevail.
The drug companies may thus expect to see their huge profits reduced rather than curtailed. Those who need generic AIDS drugs the most will probably be able to get them more easily, while the general principle of patent protection will not be violated. In that light, we should all applaud.