Thai Drug Rule Under Review

摘要

Thailand's new health minister has ordered a review of a controversial government decision that broke patents on several medicines, allowing the country to make or import generic versions of the drugs. Health activists had welcomed the policy, adopted last year by Mongkol Na Songkhla, health minister in the government installed after the September 2006 coup. He ordered compulsory licenses on two AIDS drugs-efavirenz and lopinavir/ritonavir-and clopidogrel, a heart medication (Science, 8 June 2007, p. 1408).