Andrea Leistra wrote:
>
> The article in the NYT last week put a bit of a different spin on the
> issue; the fact that a profitable use for the drug has been found
> means that it *will* be produced, as it isn't now, and that some will
> now be available for combating sleeping sickness. Obviously I'd like
> to see the pharmaceuticals produce it for altruistic purposes to
> combat the disease, but as that isn't going to happen I don't think
> it's a bad thing that it's being produced now especially as it means
> some will become available.
>
> >From http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/health/09SLEE.html:
>
> The Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and the Gillette Company have just
> introduced eflornithine in a facial cream, Vaniqa, and Bristol-Myers
> is close to an agreement with the World Health Organization and the
> medical charity Doctors Without Borders for the companies to make an
> injectable form to treat human African trypanosomiasis, better known
> as sleeping sickness.
Doesn't it seem a bit bizarre that we need to depend on finding a way to
market pharmaceuticals to the relatively well to do in order that they be
produced to save not so well to do lives?
I would never wish for it, but I think that if I were a stricken African I
would see it as poetic justice if a plague born in Africa, something that
could have been stopped except that it wasn't economically feasible, swept the
developed world.
>
> Of course, if I *hadn't* read this article last week, I would have had
> no idea what disease you were talking about, because you didn't bother
> to mention that trivial little detail in your post.
>
It was in my first post, sorry.
Doug
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
