From Human Rights Watch: The U.S. government is threatening to obstruct low-income countries’ access to generic HIV/AIDS drugs approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), Human Rights Watch said today. The United States will convene a conference in Botswana on Monday that may challenge the WHO’s approval of generic copies of patented AIDS drugs. WHO has made enormous headway in verifying the quality of generic AIDS drugs that are the only hope for millions of low-income people with AIDS. But to protect brand-name pharmaceutical interests, the United States may dash that hope. The drugs in question meet the stringent standards of the WHO’s technical review for generic drugs but have not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The United States, under pressure from pharmaceutical companies selling the brand-name equivalents, claims instead that “there are no uniform principles, guidelines or international standards addressing the development” of generic drugs — an assertion that calls into question the WHO’s widely accepted review process. “WHO has made enormous headway in verifying the quality of generic AIDS drugs that are the only hope for millions of low-income people with AIDS,” said Joanne Csete, director of the HIV/AIDS Program at Human Rights Watch. “But to protect brand-name pharmaceutical interests, the United States may dash that hope.”