forget petroleum or water, it's going to be about drugs.

[ironymaiden]

a possible cure for AIDS and herpes, and influenza. i have a hard time believing this is true. i also have a feeling this drug could start wars. the research was paid for and the patents held by a US pharmaceutical company. if it does everything it has the potential to do, withholding it from people who can't afford to pay for it seems like murder.

as Grandma says, "we're getting too smart. these are the end times."

Comments

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

I reserve judgement. I'd love for a cure to exist, but I'd really prefer if it didn't cause global insanity while the US gov't defends corporate rights to rape and pillage. The best possible solution I can think of is (again, if this thing is for real) having the say, 10 wealthiest countries in the world pay proportionate amounts of the R&D costs plus some kind of smallish financial reward to the drug company, and essentially Open Sourcing it, allowing all national governments to get in on the manufacture and distribution of the drug. Of course, the US may not go for that (especially since they'd be expected to pay the most or they may percieve it as a threat to their sovereignty and capitalism). Then the military comes out. Ugh. This bizarre alternate reality I'm creating is getting ugly. Of course, the Republicans could gain massive public support by handling this properly, so it still might be in their best interests to be good people...

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

the Republicans could gain massive public support by handling this properly

Where "properly" means "witholding it from everyone, because it diminishes the need for abstinence."

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

Grrr.

I don't get how they justify that--as if preventing "sin" is more important than preventing death. Isn't indirectly causing someone's death or suffering a far greater sin than merely allowing them free will to sin if they want? Shouldn't the punishment for sin be the judgement of the Big Guy, not theirs?

[ironymaiden]

I don't get how they justify that--as if preventing "sin" is more important than preventing death.
you would think that. i didn't understand the motive force behind meddling with other people's lives until i heard this. they don't want anyone to go to hell, so it's more important to "save" them now.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050530/pollitt

That's the article that convinced me that they were more concerned about saving souls than saving lives. And it also made me want to kill.

[ironymaiden]

interesting. the argument i got from the Nation piece is the idea that they're focused on controlling women more than perpetuating a certain set of values.
i'm not sure that's the same as souls saved. in the TAL piece there's a bit where he talks about his duty to "witness" to people on airplanes. it was the first time i ever understood it. it's completely misguided compassion. i felt so sorry for him.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

My best friend in junior high told me I was going to hell. I lived next door to Jehovah's Witnesses. I get that the drive to convert stems from compassion. But I'm not sure that the drive to control women doesn't come from the same place. It's a lame place to take a lesson from, but the Nicole Kidman "Stepford Wives" movie has the same thing in it. When you have a concrete idea of how the world should be, and you're convinced that we'd all be better off for it, you're willing to fuck people up no end to get it. It's all the End Justifies the Means. I'm not sure how high up you have to go in the Christian Right for it to become just a corporation. My real fear is that it doesn't ever get there.

[buhrger]

they don't want anyone to go to hell, so it's more important to "save" them now.
absolutely. it seems mediæval to a lot of us (heck, it is mediæval), but these people are seriously afraid that (a) others will go to hell and (b) that if they don't do their utmost to stop (a), they may go to hell too.
very few people do evil things because deep down they like hurting other people.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

I'm just saying that if they want to improve their approval ratings and they're smart they'll help save what? Billions of lives in one go. Not that they actually are smart or that they'll do that.

[ironymaiden]

...pay proportionate amounts of the R&D costs plus some kind of smallish financial reward to the drug company...
and there's the rub. pharmaceutical companies don't spend on R&D so that the miracle drug can be socialized. although in this case, i'm fascinated that it's happening at all, since we would be replacing years of daily intense drug therapy with a single dose, so this invention is not going to make big profits. you want a drug people have to take every day until they're dead, like insulin or cigarettes.
that innovation/profit relationship is why there's national (but not local)political pressure to keep me from ordering my drugs from Canada :/

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

If you look at the WIPO website, you'll find that there's already a small amount of this going on in the realm of AIDS drugs for sub-saharan Africa. So it wouldn't be entirely without precedent. I think they may have been banking on it as a cure for the common cold and other viral stuff. That will still be a moneymaker for quite a while since viruses can mutate pretty damn fast.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong though, WIPO is full of shit.