Democracy Now: Friend Of Big Pharma

Democracy Now had two stories on AIDS in underdeveloped countries, and problems with access to drugs:

Pills Profits Protest: A Chronicle of the Global AIDS Movement

A Debate on the Role of Pharmaceutical Companies and Access to HIV Treatment in the Developing World


This of course prompted the inevitable Reality Check from Moi. My email to Democracy Now:


Earth to DN: You dropped the ball again.

You ran two stories today on access to AIDS drugs in underdeveloped countries. And yet you completely failed to note in either piece that drugs cure nothing. The ramifications of your stories is that it's perfectly fine to create a world of prescription drug junkies. Not a word, not a hint, that there are alternatives to drugs that mask symptoms, alternatives that actually bolster the body's ability to fight AIDS, alternatives that actually cure.

Once you have a world of junkies, BigPharma will make it up on volume, the resulting culture of drugs around the world just like in the US, and side effects from all that new drug use which in turn will create even greater demand for drugs. All of this will suck the lifeblood from those who need solutions, not more pillaging from the Western nations and the pharmaceutical drug cartel.

TLC