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There is no room for protection of paper copy rights when we have to protect our own physical lives. We applauded the South Africa's government when they allowed the breaking of copy rights of pharmaceutical transnationals to save the lives of millions of HIV infected people; people who couldn't have afforded the copy righted protected prices of drugs. At that time South Africa and all Africa won as the transnationals discontinued their lawsuits against the Free Trade's infringement of paper copy rights.

And today we applaud the decision of Minister of Health Allan Rock who in the light of biological threats has decided to break the copy rights of the pharmaceutical transnational Bayer and buy a generic version of Cipro from Canadian pharmaceutical company Apotex. Life comes before money and again we compliment the sensitivity of Honourable Allan Rock in responding to bio-terrorism as he says "We are ready, and this will make us more ready." And we are confident that the transnational Bayer will think over twice before launching a lawsuit against Health Canada.

References

"Challenging a paradigm is not a part-time job. It is not sufficient to make your point once and then blame the world for not getting it. The world has a vested interest in, a commitment to, not getting it. The point has to be made ppatiently and repeatedly, day after day after day"-- Donella Meadows, author of The Limits to Growth

Ottawa faces lawsuit over anthrax-drug contract. Bayer denies federal claim it could not deliver enough pills, National Post, October 19, 2001 http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20011019/744365.html

Ottawa spending millions to fight bio-terrorism, CBC Canada, October 19, 2001 http://www.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/10/19/rock_011019