Big Pharma vs. AIDS patients (comic)

Monday, May 07, 2007
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: AIDS patients, drug patents, intellectual property

Email this article to a friend Printable Version  FREE Email Newsletter

Share
Share/Save/Bookmark
Free Health Ranger email newsletter
Your email privacy is 100% protected.


See all CounterThink cartoons...

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Did you ever wonder why countries like Thailand and Brazil are taking steps to bypass pharmaceutical patent laws and make generic versions of AIDS drugs available to their people? It's because Big Pharma is using patents to extort money from poor AIDS patients around the world. Countries like Thailand have decided they're no longer going to tolerate the predatory pricing of U.S. and European drug companies armed with squads of intellectual property lawyers. Instead, they're just declaring national health emergencies and either buying or making their own generic equivalents of brand-name AIDS drugs.

Drug companies routinely abuse patent laws to deny medicines to the poorest people around the world unless they pay up. And they have to pay big! AIDS drugs are expensive even for Americans. For the average Thailand worker, who earns only a few dollars a day, the drugs are simply impossible to afford. But Big Pharma seems fine with the idea of, "If you don't pay up, you die," and they use patents to effectively restrict potentially lifesaving drugs from AIDS patients, all while claiming they're actually helping people. Sure they're helping SOME people: The ones who can afford to make drug companies even wealthier. But the rest just get abandoned.

Pharmaceuticals are a for-profit industry

A human life has no value to a drug company unless there is a revenue stream attached to it. Drug companies are in business to make money, not to save lives, and they have proven they'll use every tactic at their disposal to accomplish their goals, including using aggressive legal tactics, monopolistic market practices, corruption, bribery and the committing of crimes against humanity.

It is my belief that the nations of the world should end all patents on medicines, seeds and genes, returning that so-called "intellectual property" to the people instead of keeping it in the hands of greedy corporations. Drug companies use patent laws to monopolize chemicals that should belong in the public domain. Many of the chemicals used to make drugs were originally stolen from nature (biopiracy), then modified and patented by drug companies. So why should a corporation own a chemical that was originally found in nature in the first place? Shouldn't these medicines belong to the people?

Big Pharma defenders argue that without patent laws, drug innovation would stop. But that assumes what we're seeing now is innovation in the first place. It isn't. It's just profiteering. Most new drugs are no better than the old drugs they claim to replace, and the majority of the so-called "innovation efforts" pursued by drug companies today have nothing whatsoever to do with making people healthier, but everything to do with inventing and marketing new diseases and scaring consumers into thinking they need high-priced synthetic chemicals in their bodies just to function from day to day.

Much of pharmaceutical medicine, as practiced today, is a hoax. Calling it "innovation" is merely wishful thinking. Take note that even as Americans are paying the highest fees in the world for pharmaceuticals and health care, they are nowhere near the healthiest people in the world. Clearly, pharmaceutical-based medicine simply doesn't work!

Ending all patents on medicines would break Big Pharma's monopoly stranglehold over organized medicine and end the drug industry's global exploitation of consumers. Medicine should not be a for-profit industry. Medicine should be created and shared for the common good, to benefit as many people as possible, not to restrict drugs from only those who are not wealthy enough to pay.

Because the bottom line is that no nation can continue to afford Big Pharma's price-fixing scam that marks up drugs as much as 500,000% over the cost of their raw ingredients. The pharmaceutical industry is right now bankrupting the U.S. federal government and numerous states like California. If something radical isn't done soon to end Big Pharma's profiteering and control over medicine, we will all be losers, not just AIDS patients living in poor nations.

End drug patents. Medicine should be open source.


Permissions to use: Want to use this cartoon? Specific, limited permission is granted to reprint in any book, movie, website, magazine, newspaper, animation or other media under the following 'professional courtesy' conditions:

  1. Cartoon creator Mike Adams must be conspicuously credited.
  2. Web address www.NaturalNews.com must be posted below or adjacent to the cartoon in a conspicuous manner. If on the web, the link must be clickable.
  3. You may not use this cartoon in a disparaging context or manner.
  4. You may not charge for this cartoon.
  5. Truth Publishing retains all ownership, rights and copyrights.
  6. Reprint rights may be revoked, without notice, on a case by case basis, if reprint courtesy is, in our opinion, abused.
High-resolutions files are available for film and print.


Get articles like this delivered to you FREE in our popular email newsletter



Related CounterThink Cartoons:


Related Articles:











Take Action: Support NaturalNews.com

Email this article to a friend

Share this article on: NewsVine | digg | del.icio.us

Permalink to this article:

Reprinting this article: Non-commercial use OK, cite NaturalNews.com with clickable link.

Embed article link: (copy HTML code below):



Advertise with NaturalNews...


Vilcabamba Ecuador resources

Ecuador destinations
Ecuador travel tips
Ecuador land for sale
Vilcabamba real estate company

Free Special Reports

Nutrition Can Save America!
The Healing Power of Sunlight and Vitamin D
The 7 Principles of Mindful Wealth
The pH Nutrition Guide to Acid / Alkaline Balance
Pet Food Ingredients Revealed! (shocking)
Medicine From Fish
The Water Cure

Support NaturalNews Sponsors:

Advertise with NaturalNews...


Explore NaturalPedia.com, the internet's largest natural health encyclopedia of knowledge, covering over 50,000 topics. It's free!
Visit NaturalPedia.com.


NEW Product: Valley of Longevity Shampoo from the Health Ranger

• 98% Organic
• 100% Natural
• 100% Fragrance Free!
• No SLS
• No Parabens
• No synthetic chemicals
Click here to read more...


FREE Report: The Five Best Anti-Viral Products to Beat Influenza, Swine Flu, Bird Flu and SARS

• Top anti-viral remedies
• Where to get them now
• Four things to avoid
• Become self-reliant
• Boost your family safety

Click here to read the FREE report now.


Breaking News Stories:

     See more breaking news...

Also on NaturalNews:

Health Ranger Videos
Activist music
CounterThink Cartoons
Food documentaries
FREE Special Reports
Podcasts


This site is part of the Natural News Network © 2017 All Rights Reserved. Privacy | Terms All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing International, LTD. is not responsible for content written by contributing authors. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. Your use of this website indicates your agreement to these terms and those published here. All trademarks, registered trademarks and servicemarks mentioned on this site are the property of their respective owners.