Drug Companies Put Profits Over Lives

pHaze writes: "An article on BBC news says 39 Pharmaceutical companies have taken the South African Government to court to try and block legislation which gives the SA government powers to import or manufacturer cheaper versions of brand-name drugs, specifically HIV and AIDS medication. This is an interesting clash of intellectual property rights versus morality, and if the SA government wins this one (and it looks like they might), does it set a precedent on government's ability to violate international patents at will?"

Comments

Re:Eating the seed corn

[caffeinated_bunsen]

You make some valid points, but there are some problems with applying them to South Africa. There is virtually no market for AIDS drugs in South Africa at current prices. The vast majority of people with the disease would have to work for several weeks to afford one day's worth of treatment. The choice of being broke or dead is not even available to these people; they're already broke. The choice is being broke, dead, and not pissing off the drug companies, or being broke, alive, and irking large American corporations.

Profits from drug sales are definitely essential to researching new treatments. The important thing is that no significant profit is currently being made in South Africa, so there's no profit to be immediately lost by selling those patients drugs at low cost. The only way for them to lose money is if the low-cost drugs take the place of high-cost versions in markets that can actually afford the higher priced drugs. The drug companies are not sacrificing those thousands or millions of lives for the sake of research into future treatments. They are not even doing it to protect next year's bottom line. They are allowing every one of those people to die simply to make it clear that they control the prices, and they'll change them if and only if they want to.

I do have to agree completely with your last point, though. Education and prevention are more important than anything else.