The ongoing refusal by Johnson & Johnson to partipicate in the Medicines Patent Pool, which is an initiative designed to streamline patent licensing for producing generics of patented HIV meds and offering lower prices in poor countries, has now generated a scolding from Doctors Without Borders, the international humanitarian organization.

In a statement, the group accuses the health care giant of turning its corporate back on HIV patients by undermining access to key AIDS drugs. J&J holds patents on rilpivirine, which is being developed as a first-line HIV treatment, as well as darunavir and etravirine, two meds that treat HIV patients who have become resistent to other drugs.

The missive appears carefully timed. Later this week, J&J will hold it annual shareholder meeting, which is expected to amount to a referendum on the stewardship - some would say the lack thereof - demonstrated by ceo Bill Weldon. In stunning fashion, he has presided over a massive product recall scandal that led to congressional hearings, a consent decree, lost sales and a tarnished reputation. More recently, J&J paid $70 million in fines for offering bribes to overseas customers (see here and here).

As for the MPP, J&J has declined to license its HIV drug patents to the organization, which hopes to increase access to lower-cost versions of HIV drugs. Instead, J&J’s Tibotec earlier this year announced a licensing deal with several generic drugmakers to manufacture, market and distribute an investigational an HIV med in India, sub-Saharan Africa and Least Developed Countries (read here).

Other drugmakers, though, including Gilead Sciences and ViiV Healthcare, which is a joint venture between Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, agreed to hold talks with the MPP (back story). And last year, the National Institutes of Health also agreed to license a med to the MPP (see this).

“High prices mean patients in poor countries continue to be relegated to second-class care, with no choice but to take older, more toxic drugs we would no longer use in the US, and with almost no treatment options when the virus becomes resistant to the limited number of drugs available,” DWB US executive director Sophie Delaunay says in a statement. “By putting its HIV drug patents in the pool, Johnson & Johnson has a unique opportunity to transform this situation and save lives worldwide. Instead, it has chosen to turn its back on these patients.”

This is not the first time the J&J position has generated protest. Last month, several dozen people protested around London (read here). At the time, a J&J spokeswoman wrote us to say that, while there was no interest in joining the MPP, an ongoing dialogue was under way. From the sound of things, little has come of that effort.