Why HIV “prevention does not work” has been the subject of recurrent discussions during the past weeks. It all started with a thought-provoking article published online by Frontiers in LA, “a one-stop source of content for Southern California’s LGBT community” (welcome to the Ghetto) by Michael Liberatore who wrote that “if pharmaceutical companies were supplying the cash to develop [HIV/AIDS] treatments, couldn’t they just as easily stall the development of newer, less profit-friendly treatments to assure that their bank accounts continue to swell?”
The article is worth reading and raises some …

Access to life saving medicines is once more at the heart of trade negotiations between Thailand and the US. And again the US administration and businesses have chosen to bully the Thai government in advance of a meeting in Washington prior to the release of the that impacts on trade conditions between the US and its partners.
Compulsory licensing (CL) has been the casus beli of an ongoing battle started when the junta government led by Surayud Chulanont issued compulsory licences for antiretrovirals and anti-cancer drugs in September 2006 in …

Or the case of Thailand compulsory licensing vs. right wing pharmaceutical lobbyists
This article was written in May 2007, revised in June 2007 and minor edits were made on 17/11/08. I decided to republish it after my attention was drawn by the Wisdom of Whores to a recent opinion piece written by Roger Bate for the New York Times. In his latest article for the NYT, Bate conflates generic and counterfeit medicine finding another occasion to held high the flag of a sometimes unscrupulous pharmaceutical industry. The text below is a …

It was bound to happen. With the development of anti retroviral therapies equally successful against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the Pharmaceutical industry had to enter the competitive arena of the mercantilisation of AIDS’s treatments and what best than using scary marketing techniques to sale drugs to fight a frightening disease?
Whilst GlaxoSmithKline has been advertising its protease inhibitor Lexiva over the background of a shark infested sea, Bristol-Myers Squibb showed an image of a toilet and says, “Ask your doctor if there are HIV medications with a low risk …

Abbott Laboratories Inc, one of the greediest and most despised Pharma in its league has agreed to pay between $10 million and $27.5 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by AIDS patients over the company’s 400 percent price hike of the HIV drug Norvir, the International Herald Tribune reports.
Back in late 2003, Abbott increased the price of Norvir’s average daily cost per patient five times to compensate for the smaller doses of Norvir needed when used as a booster rather than as a standalone drug.
Where do they get such idea at …