Once again, the old chestnut of profit over all else rears its ever-so-ugly head, and I am joining the fight in an effort to make a small difference in this world where we could be so much more than we are if only we would concentrate on the things that really matter - human life, liberty, advancement and justice.
Just to put it all in a nutshell, Novartis, like all pharmaceutical companies, are trying to protect their obscene profit margins by shutting down the generic drug companies of India. These Indian drug companies manufacture cheap (i.e. affordable to the developing world) copies of drugs such as AIDS treatments so that all can have a chance to live a decent life free of the worst side-effects of this and other scourges of humanity. Novartis are currently pushing their AIDS drugs for something like $20-25 per pill (one needed per day), which is clearly beyond most people in the developing world. How long must profit be considered above humanity, I ask you?
Links to MSF can be found in my links area in the right hand section of my blog window (or here -> Médecins Sans Frontières).
As they say on the website, and this should be a universal call to all peoples of the world -
People before Patents: The lives of millions are at stake!
And just in case you are worried that this may hurt Novartis' profits to the point where they will no longer be able to provide the world with pharmaceutical development dollars, there's this extract from Novartis' Annual Results Conference in 2006:
Dynamic 2006 Group performance:The suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of people in this world who cannot afford the overly inflated cost of AIDS treatment drugs should be on the consciences of these people who crow about their double-digit profit expansions. May they rot in hell, I say!
- Net sales rise 15% (+14% in local currencies) to USD 37.0 billion
- Operating income advances 18% as productivity initiatives more than offset acquisition costs and investments in new pharmaceutical product launches
- Net income up 17% to USD 7.2 billion
- EPS rise 16% to USD 3.06 per share in the fifth consecutive year of double-digit profit expansion
Let me go on record as saying that a prerequisite for all CEOs and Financial Officers of these mega-pharma corporations should be to tour disease-ravaged areas, and face the people that they should be helping, before they are placed in positions where it becomes a simple equation of profit over all else. Let them know the human consequences, and one would hope that they would behave in a different manner.
Extract from MSF follows:
Novartis was one of the 39 companies that took the South African government to court five years ago, in an effort to overturn the country's medicines act that was designed to bring drug prices down. Now Novartis is up to it again and is targeting India.
India produces affordable medicines that are vital to many people living in developing countries. Over half the medicines currently used for AIDS treatment in developing countries come from India and such medicines are used to treat over 80% of the 80,000 AIDS patients in Médecins Sans Frontières projects.
If Novartis is successful in its challenge against the Indian government and its patent law, more medicines are likely to be patented in India, making it very difficult for generic producers to make affordable versions of them. This could affect millions of people around the world who depend on medicines produced in India.
Tell Novartis it has no business standing in the way of people's right to access the medicines they need. Sign on and urge Novartis to DROP THE CASE against the Indian government.
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