Petition against Novartis

parson · Post by **parson** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:11 pm

someone elses' product that a very reputable source is claiming CAUSES AIDS

flipw · Post by **flipw** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:05 pm

LUCKY_STRIKE wrote:there is 2 sides to this story,
do u think these indian companies r doin this to save peoples lives, NO! sum 1 is gettin rich off sum 1 elses product!

if these indian companies do this and its saves peoples lives isn't it good whatever their motivations?

To view something like penicillin as a product to defend is a comment on where capitalists have led society.

LUCKY_STRIKE wrote:if it was something else u would not agree with it.
Novartis do many things to solve world illness, there is alot of facts missing from this!

If it was kitkats I would not have bothered posting but to me its very different.
my opinion is that medical breakthroughs should be shared for free. They should be developed and funded on a worldwide basis, and companies like Novartis should not exist in their present form. Answering to shareholders limits the things they do to help as they are driven by profits and market share.

Parson - hear what you are saying and if such developments were centralised then I think by now he'd have the cash he's asking for to prove/disprove it.

parson · Post by **parson** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:39 pm

you should read the article

http://www.harpers.org/OutOfControl.html

ed g · Post by **ed g** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 10:41 pm

I'm a big fan of MSF's work and will support anything that they think could make their job easier/more effective.

Big up to everyone who signed the petition.

There are of course dilemmas surrounding it...such is life. Few things are black and white. I signed the petition in the hope of helping MSF not either of the drug companies.

flipw · Post by **flipw** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 12:46 am

Parson wrote:you should read the article

http://www.harpers.org/OutOfControl.html

I already did.

It says that a 1998 trial of anti-hiv drugs in Uganda was not run well and its conclusions were wrong. It didn't prove the drugs reduce the transmission of HIV from mother to baby; and some participants were ill or died from toxins.
It alleges that this was covered up to protect research grants and profits from distribution.

1987 Peter Duesberg published a paper saying hiv does not cause aids. he thought the toxic drugs cause it. General consensus in the medical world was he was wrong so he got no more grants or invites to conventions
- he called for large scale tests to test his hypothesis and this didnt happen

1997 Duesberg proposes cancer is caused by chromosal malfunction rather than a mutant gene
- again some medical people agree, some don't

My view is someone should test his ideas before taking the drugs away.

Did I misunderstand the article? I have no medical background and it is pretty heavy going.

Peace.

parson · Post by **parson** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 2:01 am

or they should prove the drugs are good before they continue giving them to people

lucky_strike · Post by **lucky_strike** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:44 am

flipw wrote:
LUCKY_STRIKE wrote:there is 2 sides to this story,
do u think these indian companies r doin this to save peoples lives, NO! sum 1 is gettin rich off sum 1 elses product!
if these indian companies do this and its saves peoples lives isn't it good whatever their motivations?

To view something like penicillin as a product to defend is a comment on where capitalists have led society.

LUCKY_STRIKE wrote:if it was something else u would not agree with it.
Novartis do many things to solve world illness, there is alot of facts missing from this!
If it was kitkats I would not have bothered posting but to me its very different.
my opinion is that medical breakthroughs should be shared for free. They should be developed and funded on a worldwide basis, and companies like Novartis should not exist in their present form. Answering to shareholders limits the things they do to help as they are driven by profits and market share.

Parson - hear what you are saying and if such developments were centralised then I think by now he'd have the cash he's asking for to prove/disprove it.

well then we need to look at how these drugs r funded. i agree it should not b pirvate companies controlling the drug delelopment, but most countrys dnt have the funds, drug companies companies spend billions!
i think Novartis are being made a scape goat forsomething alot bigger! and i beleive novartis are 1 of the better companies!
some 1 needs to look into wat other companies are doing!

-blade- · Post by **-blade-** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 9:35 am

i think in near future not the "military-industrial complex" will stay in power but the "healt and CARE complex" will take over cause this is the biggest maket then. important political decisions- like everything... will be made by health authorities and they are linked to the big med. companys where the money is anyway. so...

flipw · Post by **flipw** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:03 am

Parson, we agree the proof is required and the tests should be done.
how about if patients were made aware of the possible risks, then they could choose whether to take drugs until the answer is found.

Lucky Strike, I agree with you. I know very little about the medical industry or Novartis. I just read about this particular issue and thought it was morally wrong. For me this was an example of a flaw in the free market system when applied to medicine.

flemmily · Post by **flemmily** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:51 pm

autonomic wrote: ethically, there's no justification for profit-driven drugs development. open source, nationalized drug research would eliminate the profit motive and function more in sync with real global and regional health priorities.

Ethically there's not but $$$ is a big motivational factor. I wonder how the result differs in countries with that model versus countries where its on a purely capitalistic system.

kins83 · Post by **kins83** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:57 am

There's an article about this in Metro today, interesting read.

drgk · Post by **drgk** » Thu May 03, 2007 8:32 am

i'm normally all up big biz's ass, but i'm gonna pass on this one.

first of all, they're swiss, not american, i like the swiss. i wish i was swiss. they all have machineguns and don't murder each other. even hitler didn't fuck with the swiss (their strategy at the time was to make it so costly to invade that it would never be worth any spoils of war).

the medical industry here in the USA is crumbling, there are bigger fish to fry than a company that's just trying to recoup it's substantial losses on a drug. they have made moves to make other drugs available in developing countries for low prices, i'm sure they will again.

they're also apparently challenging india's patent laws right now, sounds like someone decided to set up a factory before they got permission to make cheap knockoffs.

drgk · Post by **drgk** » Thu May 03, 2007 8:36 am

Things should be run differently so governments or bodies like the UN pay for the research and give the products to the people that need them the most. -But that's not the way things are at the moment so people should be lobbying governments and the system rather than the individual companies.

exactly.

but i am a conspiracy theorist.

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