Hypocite, definition

[madmax]

Nigeria has huge oil deposits. It has not noticeably helped the people there, nor done anything about either poverty or AIDS. Wealth in Africa goes to the top, and then out of the country into foreign bank accounts. It does not get down to the people.

The poster is correct. Much of Africa is very rich in resources. Oil, Diamonds, all sorts of things that would make nations envious. But the wealth goes as mentioned above.

[madmax]

[Am I right to assume that drug companies fund break-through medical research/experiments, drug-wise?

If there is nothing lucrative for companies, why would they spend billions making new drugs?

To save lives?

And if there are no incentives to discover, make or improve drugs....just think how many people world-wide would've been dead or dying of diseases that we just take for granted as simply common nowadays!

People are dying in the world of a disease that is not only common, but spreading.

There is nothing wrong with being a humanitarian, and not all life affirming decisions should be based soley on the bottom line.

[jbg]

What is the definition of a hypocite. Hilter is considered a monster, he killed at least 6 million Jewish people while the rest of the world, including Canada, stood by and refused entry of these peoples.

*snip*

Now the world, including Canada, is standing by allowing millions to die in Africa. Canada did announce that medicines would be generically availabe when Chretien was in government but backed down pretty quickly from presure of the drug companies.

Are we any differnet now than we were. We are hypocites, hiding behind our greed and religions.

I don't agree with your premise.

The central fact that you're missing is that on balance, the European refugees would have fit into Canadian (and U.S.) society and been a net benefit. Their exclusion was based upon fear of their religion.

By contrast, the millions of people in Africa have no education, may well be too malnourished to be educated in English (or the French or locally spoken Canadian language), have no skills, have no work ethic or history of being employed or operating businesses.

King was right that no society is under an obligation to implode by taking in too many immigrants, particularly unskilled ones. However, simplyletting people die for the sake of letting them die is what is wrong.

[jbg]

No go back and read my post, I am talking about the Aids epidemic which we as rich countries refuse to help with. Its easy to pick out this bad guy and that one, lets you off the hook doesn't it. How many aids orphans are there in Africa, and do you care. Its called genocide

And how willing would drug companies be willing to invest in new technologies if they ran the risk that drugs made available for free could be smuggled back in and glut the marketplace?

[jbg]

Nigeria has huge oil deposits. It has not noticeably helped the people there, nor done anything about either poverty or AIDS. Wealth in Africa goes to the top, and then out of the country into foreign bank accounts. It does not get down to the people.

Nor does foreign aid.

[betsy]

[Am I right to assume that drug companies fund break-through medical research/experiments, drug-wise?

If there is nothing lucrative for companies, why would they spend billions making new drugs?

To save lives?

But we're talking of business. The business of "saving lives." These people are not in it for charity.

Funding to make new drugs to fight diseases and other ailments from cancer to heart to respiratory to mental, etc.., is an investment for them. Of course they know they'll make tons of money....that's why they're doing it. For every new drug made available....how many times did it go through several experiments, failures and trials until it is deemed a success?

I don't think they deserve this much bashing. For all their greed....mankind had benefitted from it too.

Just with the fight against cancer alone....they've come a long way.

What's so different about businesses that sell food? Shouldn't we pressure them to sell food in impoverished countries at bottom prices since children in Africa are dying at an alarming rate due to hunger?

People are dying in the world of a disease that is not only common, but spreading.

I wasn't referring to AIDS. I'm talking about what we consider as ordinary diseases now, which were serious illnesses and killers in the past. Tuberculosis, pneumonia, heart diseases, syphillis, etc..,

There is nothing wrong with being a humanitarian, and not all life affirming decisions should be based soley on the bottom line.

No, there's nothing wrong about being humanitarian. And there's nothing wrong about a business making money.

Don't these companies have a code of ethics...I think they do have one that they adhere to, otherwise they can be forced by the government to do it.

What gets me is the way some (usually the socialists-minded) tend to demonize businesses....any businesses that makes money.

Besides, it's all a "band-aid" solution anyway...until the people learn that the best way is to prevent getting AIDS....using condoms and stopping promiscuity. And most importantly, until the corrupt governments in most African nations give the aids to their people...and not line their own pockets out of it!

[madmax]

Besides, it's all a "band-aid" solution anyway...until the people learn that the best way is to prevent getting AIDS....using condoms and stopping promiscuity. And most importantly, until the corrupt governments in most African nations give the aids to their people...and not line their own pockets out of it!

Yes, you are correct. However, many of the religions are Catholic, Evangelical and Muslim and do not condon the use of condoms. Many members of these corrupt governments are dying of aids. Also workers in these countries often leave their wifes for a year or more, meet other women, and bring aids back into the household.

With regards to Pharmacy companies. The governments allow for laws that protect these companies from competition, and they often expand these protections. This is what allows these companies to earn such huge profits. They are not going bankrupt. They corner the market and their intellectual property is protected against generic manufacturers.

If government protects these companies to allow them to prosper, governments can also choose to co-oerce these companies into reducing the costs of the drugs for humanitarian purposes over profit.

I understand what you have mention above, and agree with most of it. The argument can be transferred to the other issues you speak about.

Clinton’s Foundation Brokers AIDS Deal

Published: November 30, 2006

MUMBAI, Nov. 30 — The cost of treating children infected with H.I.V. and AIDS is poised to plummet next year, under a deal announced today between two Indian drugmakers and former President Bill Clinton’s foundation.

Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories agreed to make 19 different anti-retroviral drugs designed for children available to 62 developing countries at an average price of $60 a year, which is less than half of the lowest current price, the Clinton Foundation said in a statement. Because not everyone has access to the lowest current price, the plan will actually translate into a four- to six-fold cost reduction for many children, said Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa.

Many current AIDS drugs are made only in dosages and formats appropriate for adults, but the new drugs will be made specifically for easy administration to children.

“Whatever else happens,” Mr. Clinton said by telephone this evening from Chennai, where he flew after announcing the program in New Delhi, “we’re going to be able to save hundreds of thousands — and, in the next few years, millions — of lives of young people, because there’s a funding source to get them medicine, there’s an affordable price, and the medicine itself is a 3-in-1 pill that will be far easier to take and stay on.”

A $35 million grant from Unitaid, a drug-buying consortium formed in September by France, Brazil, Chile, Norway and the United Kingdom, will be combined with $15 million from the Clinton Foundation to assure the Indian drugmakers a volume of sales high enough to justify the lower prices.

There are 2.3 million children worldwide with H.I.V., with 2 million in Africa alone, according to United Nations figures, and just 10 percent of them are receiving treatment. The vast majority of infected children get the virus from their mothers during pregnancy or breast-feeding, and 700,000 more will get the virus this year at present rates. There is an 80 percent chance of an infected child’s dying before the age of 5; half a million children are expected to die next year.

There is little interest among global drugmakers in catering to the pediatric market. Western pharmaceutical companies generate most of their profits on AIDS drugs by treating adults in the West, where mother-to-child transmission of the virus has been effectively eliminated by medicines still not widely accessible in poorer countries.

Without a strong market for pediatric AIDS treatments, doctors in the developing world are frequently left to smash adult pills into child-sized doses, guessing the proper amount based on weight and age.

Jon Liden, a spokesman for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, based in Geneva, said the deal announced today would allow grants already made by the foundation to treat substantially more people in 2007.

“It’s a hugely positive step,” he said, “because one of the really difficult areas in rolling out treatment has been to have a steady and huge supply of pediatric dosages and packaging.”

Aid organizations have been warning that the contribution of generic companies will be short-lived. Ellen ‘t Hoen of Médecins Sans Frontières, the Paris-based organization also known as Doctors Without Borders, warned today that Western pressure on countries like India to tighten patent rules will complicate price reductions.

Indian drug companies were able to produce the special pediatric drugs because they mixed together a customized combination of chemicals invented by Western companies but never patented under India’s once-lax intellectual-property protections. Yet India has recently changed its patent rules, under its World Trade Organization commitments, so as to protect Western innovations.

“What President Clinton did today is fantastic,” Hoen said. “He will not be able to do it in a few years time.”

In another Asian country combating AIDS, there was an omen this week that patents will spur ever greater tensions between AIDS activists and drugmakers.

Health officials in Thailand announced on Wednesday that they would break a patent on the AIDS drug Efavirenz and make generic copies.

Efavirenz is a second-line AIDS treatment, made for those immune to the first generation of AIDS drugs, and it is substantially more expensive than first-line drugs.

It was the first time Thailand has broken a patent since it adopted tough patent protections 27 years ago.

As with pediatric drugs, the cost of second-line treatments has yet to fall as precipitously as first-line therapies have. Within the last decade, the latter drugs have dropped from up to $15,000 a person a year to as little as $130.

David Wilson, an official with Doctors Without Borders in Thailand, lauded the move. “Thailand is demonstrating,” he said in an e-mailed statement, “that the lives of patients have to come before the patents of drug companies.”

[betsy]

True, Africa is in a very desperate situation. And it's not only because of AIDS.

They've got these endless wars that usually end up in tribal or ethnic cleansing, the endless famine, the endless orphans, the endless poverty...all endless sufferings. And who brings these sufferings?

Africa, sad to say, had become a very profitable business venture to a lot of people. Why not?

You've got the perfect poster to tug heartstrings all over the world. How many pockets are getting lined, starting from the donor country....going through the regular channel of endless bureacracy....all the way to the refugee camp?

That is what is hypocritical about this.

[Figleaf]

No go back and read my post, I am talking about the Aids epidemic which we as rich countries refuse to help with. Its easy to pick out this bad guy and that one, lets you off the hook doesn't it. How many aids orphans are there in Africa, and do you care. Its called genocide

When you say 'we' are hypocrites, I don't understand. I don't think Canada has any particular obligation to help Africa, so I don't see any hypocrisy in failing to help Africa.

[Saturn]

Given his background as an NDP, I am more inclined to think he speaks as one. Have you ever notice that nothing seem to satisfy this socialist party? They're always shooting for more....wether it be on social programs, benefits, anything they percieve as for the good of the common people. And they are so ridiculously anti-businesses and corporations....that incidentally create and give jobs to the common people!

What a truly pathetic attack on one of Canada's most respectable figures. You are one sad, little soul.

[Figleaf]

Given his background as an NDP, I am more inclined to think he speaks as one. Have you ever notice that nothing seem to satisfy this socialist party? They're always shooting for more....wether it be on social programs, benefits, anything they percieve as for the good of the common people. And they are so ridiculously anti-businesses and corporations....that incidentally create and give jobs to the common people!

What a truly pathetic attack on one of Canada's most respectable figures. You are one sad, little soul.

Stephen Lewis?

He wants my government to throw my tax dollars at his personal charity. If its so important, why doesn't Lewis sell his nice big house and live in a smaller place and give the money himself?

[Saturn]

When you say 'we' are hypocrites, I don't understand. I don't think Canada has any particular obligation to help Africa, so I don't see any hypocrisy in failing to help Africa.

I don't see any particular obligation on our behalf to fund US drug companies' advertising campaigns, do you?

[Saturn]

Stephen Lewis?

He wants my government to throw my tax dollars at his personal charity.

Enjoy spending your money on your personal charity - advertisements.

[Figleaf]

When you say 'we' are hypocrites, I don't understand. I don't think Canada has any particular obligation to help Africa, so I don't see any hypocrisy in failing to help Africa.

I don't see any particular obligation on our behalf to fund US drug companies' advertising campaigns, do you?

Stephen Lewis?

He wants my government to throw my tax dollars at his personal charity.

Enjoy spending your money on your personal charity - advertisements.

What are you talking about?

[Saturn]

Enjoy spending your money on your personal charity - advertisements.

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about the skyrocketing costs of health care, primarily caused by the skyrocketing costs of drugs, which in turn a caused to a large extent by skyrocketing advertising costs (roughly 3 times the costs of R&D of the pharmaceuticals).

[Figleaf]

Enjoy spending your money on your personal charity - advertisements.

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about the skyrocketing costs of health care, primarily caused by the skyrocketing costs of drugs, which in turn a caused to a large extent by skyrocketing advertising costs (roughly 3 times the costs of R&D of the pharmaceuticals).

And what's that got to do with my comments?

[jbg]

Given his background as an NDP, I am more inclined to think he speaks as one. Have you ever notice that nothing seem to satisfy this socialist party? They're always shooting for more....wether it be on social programs, benefits, anything they percieve as for the good of the common people. And they are so ridiculously anti-businesses and corporations....that incidentally create and give jobs to the common people!

What a truly pathetic attack on one of Canada's most respectable figures. You are one sad, little soul.

And how many posting names do you have?

[mikedavid00]

The Sudanese have been unwilling to allow us to intervene other than with the AU. If we get the chance, we should hang their leaders for genocide. But I somehow think that we're not going to get that chance.

There's tons of people from Sudan in Montreal when I was there. They have many kids and seem to be a social assistance.

[betsy]

Given his background as an NDP, I am more inclined to think he speaks as one. Have you ever notice that nothing seem to satisfy this socialist party? They're always shooting for more....wether it be on social programs, benefits, anything they percieve as for the good of the common people. And they are so ridiculously anti-businesses and corporations....that incidentally create and give jobs to the common people!

What a truly pathetic attack on one of Canada's most respectable figures. You are one sad, little soul.

Sheeessh. I'm probably a much "sadder little soul" than that if I give free reign to what I think of the UN and people like Lewis.

This was not a personal attack on his integrity. This is just an observation on what is obvious among the NDP....or you might say, the socialist-leaning party. And of course, the UN.

Let's not overdo this drama on this "darling of the decade," Africa. As far as I know, Canada is givng foreign aid to Africa. I have no complaints about that. But people like Lewis wants Canada to shoulder the healthcare of this foreign country!

Lewis reminds me why I'll never vote NDP!

Why is it suddenly our obligation to carry the entire burden of Africa?

Before you all scream and hurl labels of "hypocrites"....why don't you all work to concentrate on eliminating our own problem of AIDS, poverty, illiteracy, healthcare woes etc....right here in our own backyard!

When there are no longer any homeless people roaming the streets, poverty-stricken elderlies and hungry Canadian children....and when AIDS no longer spread among our population....THAT'S WHEN we tackle saving the entire world!