FIRE IN THE BLOOD is a documentary film by Dylan Gray (released 2013). It is an award-winning documentary that is profound for its truth and disturbing for profit over humanity. It is a profound story of courageous individuals trying to bring medicine to the AIDS stricken in Africa and disturbing because pharmaceutical companies are able to use patent law to block the use of generic drugs leading to the deaths of millions.
A patent is a right granted by the federal government to an inventor to exclude others from making, using or selling the patented invention. The patent law tactics used to deny Africa generic drugs are the same tactics pharmaceutical companies use every day to inflate the cost of cancer drugs in the USA.
The film tells the story of how Western pharmaceutical companies and governments blocked access to low-cost AIDS drugs for the countries of Africa and the global south. FIRE IN THE BLOOD is the story of the people who decided to fight back. The documentary is available in DVD, or on demand TV. To watch for free: http://www.freedocumentary.tv/fire-in-the-blood/
Gray, the the film's Director, had read a news article, in The Economist, about the ‘power struggle’ over low-cost AIDS medication for Africa and the global south. The article indicted the coalition of activists, generic drug makers, public figures and civil society organizations as conspiring to bypass international patent laws.
“One of the characters in our film, Dr. Yusuf Hamied, who’s an Indian generic drug maker, [discussed in The Economist article] was talking about how [Hamied] was bringing in low-cost antiviral medications to Africa. ….To my mind, [this was] a very good thing that he was doing, but they were going out of their way, I felt, to attack him, but it wasn’t clear why.” Gray told journalist Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! —independent news organization.
There are 35 million people in the world living with HIV/AIDS and 25 million of these live in sub Saharan Africa. The film investigates the effect of international patent laws compared with the needs of in those suffering the ravages of HIV/AIDS.
Gray told Goodman “The historian in me was just completely shocked and scandalized that, A) I didn’t know more about the story, and, B) that there was so little written about it… something that had killed 10, 12 million people, and it seemed to have happened almost without a record…. I mean we consider this to be the crime of the century.”
Gray tells us 84% of worldwide research for basic drug development comes from government and public sources. Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars per year are spent on finding new and better drugs. He describes the levels of profiteering on patented drugs as shocking and out of all proportion to the expenditures involved especially since tax dollars are subsidizing the research.
The film traces how Big Pharma refused to allow countries to break patents and blocked the importation of cheap generic AIDS drugs causing millions to die because they could not pay for treatment.
Gray explained that the writer of the article, in The Economist, seemed intent on damning Dr. Yusuf Hamied, head of the socially conscious Indian generic drug company Cipla, as a “pirate.” Hamid had developed an economic generic of the HIV/AIDS cocktail of antivirals. Gray sought out Dr. Hamied in Bombay several months later and through him met a number of the people who become key contributors to the documentary.
Journalist Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now! a national, daily, independent, news program, interviewed Dylan Mohan Gray, director of FIRE IN THE BLOOD. She tells us the problem, access to low cost generic drugs, continues today. The World Trade Organization continues to block importation of generic drugs in many countries because of a trade deal known as the TRIPS Agreement.
Mary Easton, historian on the website historyworkshop.org.uk comments “Companies which claim they need to charge astronomical prices in order to recoup their huge expenditures on innovative research actually do precious little such research…” They spend huge amounts on marketing, lavish executive salaries and lawyers to extend lucrative monopolies.
Easton contends governments, who actually fund global basic drug research are giving the fruits of this research away to giant, profit-crazed corporations. These corporations sell these drugs back to governments and the public at wildly inflated prices. The luckless taxpayers who funded the breakthrough research suffer and die without receiving any benefit from it and may well go bankrupt in the process.
Easton states “Regulating “Big Pharma” is the only area of politics… where you find people on the right [conservative] side of the political spectrum howling in favor of government-granted monopolies…this can only happen with the complicity of officialdom…national governments [are not] fulfilling their mandate to protect the public interest.”
In Africa HIV/AIDS affects the whole society: men, women, children and even babies. Seven million HIV positive African people need generic drugs now but can’t access them because of limited supply due to increased pressures for patent protection even in low-income countries. There is worldwide advocacy for patent protections to be suspended, which is allowed by the World Trade Organization in times of crisis.
Dr. Peter Mugyeny, Ugandan physician, tells Amy Goodman “There was a misinformation, worldwide misinformation, that AIDS drugs were too expensive to manufacture. The second misinformation was that Africans would not be able to use these drugs, that it was impossible to use these drugs in the African condition.
…. Well, [Dr. Yusuf Hamied] just literally announced that it is not true that these drugs can only be manufactured at such an exorbitant cost. He demonstrated that they could be [produced] at relatively affordable cost, which would save millions of lives because of affordability.”
Goodman tells us in Africa [Big Pharma] drug companies were charging $15,000 a year per patient for a triple, antiviral cocktail. Dr. Hamied cut that price to less than a dollar a day from $15,000 to $350 for the year. These pharmaceutical companies used patent and trade laws to block Hamied's generic drugs from use.
As consumers and citizens of one of the most powerful countries on earth we must realize that medicine patent laws need to change. There are ways to write the laws regarding research that will allow for companies to make decent profits but still allow for those who are suffering to afford medication.
Laws are meant to serve people not to be used to enrich the elite. We need to demand that our legislators work for the citizens year round, not just during election season.
http://www.freedocumentary.tv/fire-in-the-blood/
http://globalhealthsciences.ucsf.edu/education-training/blogs/masters-corner/fire-in-the-blood
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/23/fire_in_the_blood_millions_die
http://fireintheblood.com/blog/browse/news
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/business/questcor-pays-135-million-for-rights-to-competitors-drug.html?_r=1
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