Somewhat on that topic:
Look at Brazil nytimes.com
Patent laws are malleable. Patients are educable. Drug
companies are vincible. The world's AIDS crisis is solvable.
But not if the drug companies have anything to say about it. This article gets into the rather odd economics by which US companies charge extortionist rates on drugs that were often developed using government money, and then go around strongarming the rest of the world to get them to pay the same extortionist rates. Meanwhile, lots of people are dying.
Until a year ago, the triple therapy that has
made AIDS a manageable disease in
wealthy nations was considered realistic
only for those who could afford to pay
$10,000 to $15,000 a year or lived in
societies that could. The most that poor
countries could hope to do was prevent new cases of AIDS through
educational programs and condom promotion or to cut mother-to-child
transmission and, if they were very lucky, treat some of AIDS's
opportunistic infections. But the 32.5 million people with H.I.V. in the
developing world had little hope of survival.
This was the conventional wisdom. Today, all of these statements are
false. . . .
Brazil can afford to treat AIDS because
it does not pay market prices for antiretroviral drugs -- the most
controversial aspect of the country's plan. In 1998, the government
began making copies of brand-name drugs, and the price of those
medicines has fallen by an average of 79 percent. Brazil now produces
some triple therapy for $3,000 a year and expects to do much better,
and the price could potentially drop to $700 a year or even less.
Brazil is showing that no one who dies of AIDS dies of natural causes.
Those who die have been failed -- by feckless leaders who see weapons
as more alluring purchases than medicines, by wealthy countries (notably
the United States) that have threatened the livelihood of poor nations
who seek to manufacture cheap medicine and by the multinational drug
companies who have kept the price of antiretroviral drugs needlessly out
of reach of the vast majority of the world's population.
Er. I'm sure W's chosen AG and the rest of his holy roller team will weigh in on the "right" side on this one.
Cheers, Dan. |
