Word: drugging
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...pricing of antiretroviral (ARV) treatments for AIDS and HIV is a particularly contentious issue. Drug companies say they need to recoup the billions of dollars spent on research, and argue that generic copies eliminate the rewards that fund drug discovery and development. (Drug patents typically expire after 20 years in the U.S., but that figure varies from country to country.) Some aid groups and scientists say the drugs' prices put them beyond the reach of those who need them most, and claim the companies put profits and patents before lives...
...would any drug company want to do business in Africa? To be a pharmaceutical giant on the continent is to be accused of discriminating against the poor, either by pricing medicine beyond their reach or by ignoring diseases that are endemic in poverty-stricken areas. It is also to invite suspicion of using Africans as guinea pigs in unsafe drug trials - such allegations have led to ongoing lawsuits seeking more than $9 billion against Pfizer in Nigeria. (Pfizer says the allegations "are simply untrue" and is fighting the charges against a trial it calls "responsible and ethical...
...emotional debate. Protesters have hanged effigies of drug CEOs outside the offices of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in Washington; no less a figure than Nelson Mandela has condemned Big Pharma for exploiting the dying; and in Kenya in 2004, a Jesuit priest who ran an orphanage in Nairobi, Father Angelo D'Agostino, made headlines when he accused the "drug cartels" of "genocidal action." Today drug companies have lowered the prices of some ARVs. But the controversy threatens to reignite. In July, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that newer, more effective drugs were once...
With so much hostility and bad press, drug companies could be forgiven for wanting a better image. That is precisely what industry critics say is behind the hundreds of millions of dollars they pump into corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs in the developing world. The U.S. drug industry says it has created 126 health partnerships with governments and aid organizations that have helped up to 539 million people since 2000. Some observers remain cynical, however. They say CSR is mere window dressing - a clinic here, an outreach program there - that does not address the root problem...
There's another view of Big Pharma's CSR efforts, of course. Ask Festus Mogae, President of Botswana, whose nation has one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in Africa. The drug companies, Mogae says, are "very, very important to our efforts to fight AIDS. They fund our projects and sell us drugs at an 85% discount. Their activities have helped sensitize a nation to the whole issue of AIDS. It's having real results. It's not just...