Free market pharmaceuticals

There's a worldwide AIDS/HIV epidemic.

There are approximately 600,000 HIV-positive Brazilians, about 155,000 of whom are receiving antiretrovirals at no cost (Valor Economico, 6/2).

People are dying from lack of medicine. In Brazil, they decided to do something about it.

Brazil's lower house of government on Wednesday approved a bill that would suspend patents on all antiretroviral drugs and allow Brazilian companies to produce generic versions of the drugs if the Brazilian government cannot negotiate price reductions or licensing agreements with patent-holding pharmaceutical companies.

This is what a good government should do. Protect their citizens against the heartless mega-corporations that consider human life mere collateral damage in the war for obscene profit margins. Lula is doing his best to answer his people's call for a cure.

Our government's response to this plea for humanitarian aid? Get behind the pharma corps.

...the Brazilian government could face U.S. trade sanctions if it decides to break the patents (Nunez Diaz, Global Insight Daily Analysis, 6/2). "The government is taking actions that will undermine initiatives seeking new and better treatment for AIDS," Abbott spokesperson Brian Kyhos said, adding, "The respect to intellectual property is important as it leads to more investments" (Bloomberg.com, 6/1).

For what it costs to bomb Iraq for one day, we could afford to subsidize the drug outright for dying Brazilians. But the Bush administration would rather pay Halliburton to take lives than to help Brazil save them. I believe they call this the "free market."