AIDS cured!.... or not
- Thread starter Speedo
- Start date
You're saying drug manufacturers don't care about the money?
JerichoHill
Bedrock of Knowledge
In case you aren't aware, scientists operating out of a car garage sized lab at emory university have also unveiled a cure for aids, except this one passed simian trials and is now headed for human testing
yeah...keep spouting it
University scientists in a garage-sized lab do not equal a pharmaceutic company.
amadeus
Bishop of Bio-Dome
That isn't the same as accusing the major drug corporations of attempting to supress cheap alternatives to their medications.
It wouldn't be the first time.
when did that happen I'd really like to know - I haven't come across such a scandal in medical science...
Yoda Power
✫✫✫✫✫✫✫
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2002
- Messages
- 13,870
Swedishguy
Deity
Yep. And there is a risk people will be harmed by these "cures". It's sad.
Erik Mesoy
Core Tester / Intern
Article for Azash and co to argue over:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/29/asia/AS-MED-Thailand-Drug-Patents.php
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/29/asia/AS-MED-Thailand-Drug-Patents.php
That is something else
First of all most people seem to forget that today developing a new drug costs approx. half a billion $ or more and that usually western governments don't fund this development at all. So it is up to private corporations to invest this amount of money or new drugs will not be developed. However there is no such thing as a private investor/company who invests this amount of money without expecting/hoping for profit at some point in time. Therefore I do not see why it is immoral for pharmaceutical corporations to expect profit from new drugs - they would not have been developed without their investing a huge amount of money in the first place. That is (sadly) the reason why we see a lot of development of drugs for diseases affecting people in western countries (AIDS being one of them) while there is little effort going into curing/treating diseases like tuberculosis (this is coming back to haunt us westerners now so there will be money going into this) or malaria. In fact for all these diseases we should call upon western governments to fund research so that new medication can be developed and distributed at reasonable prices - but as long as we rely on private corporations to invest the money (and risk loosing it when the development fails) we should not deny them reasonable profit or else our system of developing new drugs will collapse.
Now about Brazil: they just as India and some African countries have declared a national emergency (or threatened to do so) with regards to HIV/AIDS according to regulations in the world trade organizations (WTO) charter. This allows them to set aside patent rights of the pharmaceutical companies and to produce generic drugs for their markets in order to deal with the epidemic in their countries. While a lot of companies have tried to reverse those decisions and accused those countries of exporting these generic drugs (which would be illegal) this was settled in most cases. India does produce certain generic AIDS drugs now and some African countries receive hugely discounted drugs from the patent owners.
Similar threads
