

Glaxo to cut prices to poor countries - physcab
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090214/glaxosmithkline_poor_countries.html

======
aneesh
This is a great move by Glaxo. I interned a drug company a couple years ago,
and you could tell there was real effort to make sure those could not afford
the drugs, but needed them, could still avail their benefits. There were
programs to provide drugs at free or reduced costs, and real patients were
frequently brought to the company's headquarters to talk to scientists &
executives about the diseases they faced, and how they faced them. Moves like
this on Glaxo's part can do a lot to ease the burden of disease.

There are two problems here:

1) Affordability of drugs. The onus here is on the drug companies to be good
citizens, follow Glaxo's lead, and go even further. It makes good sense for
drug companies to give back in this way, like Google's support of many open-
source initiatives.

2) Lack of treatment for third-world diseases. This is a much bigger problem
that will require outside forces, like private foundations or government. Big
drug companies are making drugs for lucrative diseases like cancer, but people
in poor countries are dying of AIDS, diarrhea, or malaria, before they even
have a chance of getting cancer. There's not any monetary incentive for
research to go into solving these problems in poor countries.

~~~
aneesh2
aneesh here, had to create a second account, because my main one is locked out
on noprocrast!

Didn't mean to screw up the layout above. And now I can't login to edit it.
Someone with magical admin powers, help me out here -- fix my comment, or let
me override noprocrast so I can fix it myself.

PS there should be a character limit on the code formatting.

------
Raphael
This is a really nice thing to do. But doesn't it create an incentive to
export drugs to countries that will pay more?

