Summary: Swiss pharmacy company Roche recalled a low-cost drug used to fight AIDS due to contamination. The drugs were contaminated with a chemical known to cause cancer in high doses and genetic mutations in low doses. Therefore, the relatively small number of people in the developing world who had access to life-saving pharmaceuticals just had them taken away. The same drug is manufactured by Pfizer and is sold in wealthier countries. Due to licensing and regulatory issues Pfizer will not release this life-saving drug to the undeveloped world. In other words, Pfizer doesn't find it profitable to provide the drug at an affordable cost to people who are dying in the developing world. By the way, Pfizer raked in 48.4 billion dollars last year.
Write your congress person. Ask for meaningful healthcare reform, access to life-saving pharmaceuticals, and access to medical procedures for this country's poor and working class and for meaningful solutions to the healthcare crisis in developing countries. Pharmaceutical companies are making hundreds of billions of dollars by inflating the cost of medications here and denying life-saving medications to the poor worldwide.
Here's the story from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/health/23recall.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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We cannot stand by and allow this to happen. Our silence gives tacit support or endorsement to actions like this. When we don't raise our voices, lift our pens, call our representatives, we become complicit with those who are watching this AIDS pandemic and saying well, that's not our problem. I like the question, "What will you tell your grandchildren when they ask you what did you do to help end the AIDS crisis?"
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