AIDS, Patents, and Access to Pharmaceuticals

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05 May 2009

AIDS , Patents , and Access to Pharmaceuticals

Introduction

AIDS remains one of the major social and medical problems . Dozens of pharmaceutical companies work to develop effective drugs that would save HIV-positive patients from AIDS risks and would work to prolong their lives . Since the middle of the 1980s , American companies have actively worked to develop an effective medical solution for HIV-positive and AIDS patients . Retrovir entered medical market for the price higher than 10 ,000 . Retrovir manufacturers expected that patients

would buy the product regardless its price . Moreover , high prices had to compensate the costs the company had spent to test the product . Unfortunately , high prices prevent poor population from accessing the drug . Developing countries and the countries of South Africa cannot afford saving their population from AIDS threats . That is why developing countries were given a legal permission to use generic drugs without patents . In response to these patent laws , the majority of pharmaceutical companies have lowered their prices . Many expect that these lowered price trends will continue , but governments are still reluctant to implement effective laws and to provide poor population groups with state assistance for AIDS medication

Moral problem

The moral problem is whether developed countries should be given the right to supply their HIV-positive and AIDS citizens with unpatented drugs . Not selling unpatented drugs to patients will mean not giving them a chance to postpone inevitable death . Selling unpatented drugs however , can deprive pharmaceutical companies of the...