Aids drugs for Africa deal is off as pharma giants pull out

[SobaViolence]

godless, immoral sonsabitches... via Gnn from Indepedent Online (http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/12412/AIDS_drugs_for_Africa_deal_is_off_as_pharma_giants _pull_out)

Some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, including FTSE 100 giant GlaxoSmithKline, have failed to sign a formal agreement that would ensure HIV and Aids patients in poor nations receive vital drugs.

The plan proposes that companies provide "high-quality HIV/Aids medicines and related products for impoverished people in sub-Saharan Africa and other least developed countries (LDCs) at no-profit prices".

It also backs licensing proprietary technology - so that copies of drugs can be produced cheaply - boosting educational programmes, reducing the stigma of the diseases and ensuring drugs are not diverted to countries where they could be illegally sold on. But Fred Higgs, ICEM's general secretary, said the talks had failed. None of the companies had said they would not sign, he claimed, but neither had any said they would.

[RoryMC]

Valuing money over valuing lives.

[EN[i]GMA]

See, this is the kind of shit that pisses me off, and makes me wish for a superior economic system.

And then practicality tears my dreams down.

[Schmeltz]

I don't see what's inherently impractical about delivering medication to the people who most need it. What's impractical is considering that the only way for the modern economy to function is for absolutely no concessions whatsoever to be made at the expense of a gigantic profit margin, even if people have to die unnecessarily.

[EN[i]GMA]

I don't see what's inherently impractical about delivering medication to the people who most need it. What's impractical is considering that the only way for the modern economy to function is for absolutely no concessions whatsoever to be made at the expense of a gigantic profit margin, even if people have to die unnecessarily.

True, basically.

It's very game-theoretical, but it makes sense, in a theoretical, divorced-from-human-suffering, way, but basically, if you give out say, free food to the poor, instead of throwing it away off the shelf, as grocery stores do, you remove the incentive to purchase food period, which hurts the stores profit margin.

The problem is, you have to take the good with the bad in the whole of the system.

I, for one, very much dislike this fact, but I'm not naive to think, for example, socializing the entire food production industry would work. It could work, but as we've seen, that has its own separate set of problems.

When you get down to it, what really can you do?