This is all pertaining to the THIS article. Are you kidding me? The price of AIDS treatment is getting more expensive? India is obliged to stop producing generic versions of AIDS treatments because pharmaceutical companies lose out on their investment into the product? Is this the price of joining the WTO?

Fuck the pharmaceutical companies. Yes, they pour millions of dollars and years of research into their drugs but most of the people with AIDS live in developing countries (primarily Africa, India, China, S. America, etc). Many can’t even afford food for god-sakes. From the article:

“The Guardian’s Sarah Bowsley said that there is ‘a lot of pressure’ on the Indian government by the pharmaceutical companies, to stop them producing generic versions of the newer drugs. They know that after the second-line Aids drugs we’re also talking about cancer drugs, diabetes, heart disease,” she said. “It is all the things that affect us in the West – and actually affect populations in developing countries too.”

Fuck ‘em. The Indian government’s primary directive is to take care of the Indian population. If that means that they have to reverse engineer second-line AIDS treatments to lower the price so that they can get it out to their people (and to the millions in sub-Saharan Africa) then that’s what they should do. It’s the moral high ground and anyone that objects is tacitly supporting genocide through negligence.

Dick van Eeden, a spokesperson for Abbot (some large drug company) claims price is, “not the real stumbling block” – insisting the problem is the lack of healthcare workers and infrastructure. Sub-Saharan Africa has a quarter of the global HIV burden – yet only 3% of all of the healthcare workers in the world,” he said. Pharmacies could be fully stocked, but without enough doctors and nurses, there’s just no way that people waiting outside the clinic can get the medicine.”

Fuck you Dick. How about lowering the cost of research? Move your primary research facilities to India. We have world-class lab facilities, smart people are cheaper to employ and your company might do a genuinely good thing for once. It’s called outsourcing. With lower prices, you can reach more people and governments, thereby maintaining your revenues and profit margins. That’s called supply and demand and international business. Again, douchebag! OK, rant over.

PS. Brazil does the same thing, they make generic AIDS treatments and are getting lambasted by big companies for it.

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