LETTER: Greedy pharmaceutical sector

Katharine Child’s article warns, inter alia, of the impact of exorbitantly priced drugs on medical aid societies and suggests our country needs a panel that decides what drugs are worth paying for (“Charging cancer drugmaker Roche over pricing could backfire”, February 9).

I recently watched a documentary that focused on the pharmaceutical industry’s unquenchable thirst for profit and am convinced it is time for governments to expropriate the intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies that — despite official warnings — make exorbitant profits off medicines that would, due to the dominance of their product or the lack of a viable alternative, save a large number of lives if  marketed at a significantly lower price.

Obviously, the company falling victim to this “extraordinary measure” would have to be compensated generously to avoid stifling research. The expropriation would also have to be done by the country in which the company is based.

I understand that this is a radical idea, but allowing a greedy entrepreneur to have a monopoly on a cure for a life-threatening disease paves the way for untold human suffering, and  thereby plays directly into the hands of those who say “capitalism” is a four-letter word.

Terence Grant
Cape Town

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your says to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.