health - drug money bonanza
WORKERS, JAN 2005 ISSUE
Cervical cancer is a distressing disease of our time. Yet, a new drug to deal with it is seen by GlaxoSmithKline in terms of $15 billion in profit it will bring the company.
New drugs certainly cost a great deal to research and produce, and future research and production must be safeguarded. But there can be no justification for a situation where the top ten global drugs, controlled by just seven drugs companies, generated profits in excess of $48 billion in 2003.
Four hundred million women are the potential beneficiaries of the new cervical cancer drug, in the USA and Europe alone. Health or wealth looks like becoming literally a life-defining question for millions of people in the early years of the 21st century.