Focus on the Pharmaceutical Industry

The Pharmaceutical industry is one of those global capitalist institutions which has too much power over our lives. They literally have the power to decide who lives and who dies. No more is this evident in the case of AIDS medicines for people in the Global South. Only through global activism have poor countries been able to break the legal stranglehold on medical information that can save lives. This unaccountable power is even a problem in the United States, that land of wealth and millions without health care. The pharmaceutical industry has gotten big and arrogant--this page is about cutting down that giant.

Globalizing Clinical Research
By the end of July a US district court will decide whether drug giant Pfizer should stand trial in the United States for presiding over a coercive, botched 1996 experiment on Nigerian children with meningitis. In a class-action suit filed last August, thirty Nigerian families say the company violated the Nuremberg Code by forcing an unapproved, risky experiment on unwitting subjects who suffered brain damage, loss of hearing, paralysis and death as a result.

Stripping Away Big Pharma's Figleaf
Drug prices in the United States are out of control, and rising. The reason is that the United States permits pharmaceuticals to be marketed by unregulated monopolies: Patent protection gives the drug companies monopoly control over their products. These companies face neither direct competition, nor price controls.

Has The Patent Expired On The Pharmaceutical Industry's Invincibility?
Thanks to mega-millions spent on campaign contributions and lobbying, the pharmaceutical industry has long been Washington's 800-pound gorilla -- able to skirt government oversight of its patent-extending and price-gouging schemes by muscling politicians into doing its bidding. But now it's payback time for the big ape as drug companies find themselves under fire on a series of fronts -- assailed by Congress, federal prosecutors, federal regulators, human rights activists and international health organizations.

MYTH: The pharmaceutical industry doesn't use public money or resources to develop new medicines.

MYTH: New medicines won't be developed unless we allow pharmaceutical companies to make a profit and own the intellectual property rights to new research.