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HIV "cure" could make UK first to be rid of virus

Did you ever hear of Turing Pharmaceutical, which bought back rights on existing life-critical drugs and then increased one's price by 5000% ("almost all profit"), therefore throwing many patients who depended on it in life-threatening situations? Life-critical drugs are not a product like any other (nor are food and energy in poor countries).

Even if you are indifferent to the human costs and consider fair to kill people throughout speculative operations, at least approach it from an economic perspective: pharma companies enjoy monopolies as a result of their intellectual properties. While property (IP or not) is good, we have to acknowledge that exclusive rights distort the market, usually in a benign or balanced way, but sometimes very detrimentally. The latter must be curbed.


I have absolutely nothing against profit, capitalism or pharma companies. Even the very expensive drugs are usually priced that way to offset R&D costs, and profits are overall reasonable (and I would not mind them being higher). But count me out when it comes to deliberately kill people for profit, which a few companies and traders do regularly. Famines deliberately created a few years ago by purely financial agents in cereal markets are another example.

Then you do have something against profit, capitalism and pharma companies. You cant say you dont and then criticize it. No one is deliberately killing anyone except natural causes. Pharma is a product that is sold to try and thwart nature.
 
Still only research tests and the tests on the patient will continue but this looks very positive for all sufferers around the world. (Not to mention profits for sales in treatment)

Great news - now, should the drug be free or sold for profit? (Being from a country with Universal Healthcare I am very pro-free access to critical life saving treatments)

I find this kind of reporting to be irresponsible. HIV-positive people can and do become undetectable through traditional antiretroviral therapy and undetectable is not a synonym for being HIV-negative. Undetectable means that the risk of transmission to another person is drastically reduced but you are still HIV-postive and still must disclose and use protection. So before people start casually throwing around the word "cure", they better explain the difference (if there is one) between undetectable through existing drug therapy and undetectable with this new drug.
 
We should tell sick, uninsured people that they have to go die because some greedy ***hole wants a new private jet? ......

We do that all the time. It just isn't always as immediately visible.
 
We do that all the time. It just isn't always as immediately visible.

I know. That's one reason why our healthcare system isn't "the best in the world" as some people like to yodel.
 
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Then you do have something against profit, capitalism and pharma companies. You cant say you dont and then criticize it. No one is deliberately killing anyone except natural causes. Pharma is a product that is sold to try and thwart nature.

Should pharma be allowed to pay $130,000,000 a year to lobby politicians? Does that money end up influencing policy decisions that have a negative impact on Americans?
Why do so many top people at the FDA end up being hired by pharmaceutical companies after they leave the FDA?
Is bribery and corruption an excepted part of capitalism?
 
Should pharma be allowed to pay $130,000,000 a year to lobby politicians? Does that money end up influencing policy decisions that have a negative impact on Americans?
Why do so many top people at the FDA end up being hired by pharmaceutical companies after they leave the FDA?
Is bribery and corruption an excepted part of capitalism?

Of course they should be allowed. It says so in the first amendment. Whether it influences policy is up to the politicians who make it. Stop electing them. As for bribery and corruption, yes, it is a fully expected part of capitalism and every other form of human interaction. Thats why its illegal and we why we shouldnt give politicians so much power. Power corrupts. Yet you seem to want to give them more.
 
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