When the new owners of a lifesaving AIDS drug raised its price by 5,000 percent, an online backlash forced the CEO to change his mind. While the public might have been outraged, this was hardly the first time the pharmaceutical industry failed to make a cheap-to-produce but essential medicine easily available to those who need it.
Earlier this year, experts warned that a vital snakebite antidote had been withdrawn from the market by its manufacturers and that soon there would be no equivalent treatment available at all.
Too often the knowledge and the means to save lives is put at risk by problems with the pharmaceutical market. When these medicines are already developed and can be produced at modest cost, it is all the more frustrating and morally questionable.
