The World Health Organization will announce today a list of 40 "quality" AIDS drugs, a move that will throw the group into the fray over patented and generic AIDS medicines.

The medicines on the list are approved for purchase by UN agencies, and the list lends legitimacy to generics by offering WHO's seal of approval, regardless of intellectual property rights.

"We did not look at patent status" in evaluating the drug list, which includes antiretrovirals, antibaterials, antifungals and anticancer drugs, says Jonathan Quick, director, essential drugs and medicines policy for WHO. "Patents are a national issue. If the drug was legal and registered in the country producing it, that was the entry ticket."

The list, which will be expanded and updated every two months, so far includes four big drug manufacturers and four generics makers. Two competing manufacturers of lamivudine, the generic name for 3TC, are on the list: Cipla, the Indian generics maker and GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the United Kingdom drug maker that holds the patent for 3TC. Similarly, both Cipla and Glaxo's version of zidovudine, generic AZT, are on the quality list even though Glaxo's patent on AZT remains in effect until 2005.

"We don't have any objection to generics. They just have to be compliant with world trade regulations," says Glaxo spokesperson Mary Anne Rhyne. "But the other issue is supply and sustainability. Obviously you can't put patients on a medicine if you can't continue to provide that medicine for the future."

Peter Piot, director of UNAIDS, said that once the price of AIDS medicine began to drop last year due to competition by generics and pressure from activists, many countries began fretting over quality. At a meeting last year, he said, people from poor countries living with HIV "were concerned that greater availability of these drugs would not be at the expense of quality. They will find the beginning of an answer to their question from this list," Piot said.

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