During the final stages of the 20th century, a life-threatening disease known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome struck the entire globe. Debora Spar and Nicholas Bartlett provide readers enticing and interesting information through various different points of view in their case Life, Death, and Property Rights: The Pharmaceutical Industry Faces AIDS in Africa. For the developed countries in the West, AIDS was brought under control by prevention, education, innovations, and medical discoveries. For other developing nations throughout the globe, the AIDS epidemic was still widespread. Millions continued to die from the disease in Africa, and 25 million were infected with the disease by 2000. While the issue of the discovery and spread of HIV and AIDS has been a disheartening and often difficult subject to address, the case focuses on how AIDS emerged and spread throughout multiple regions of the globe including the United States and how Western pharmaceutical firms have responded to their critics regarding the lack of available drugs for countries in Africa that have been plagued by the disease. There are two sides presented in the case opposing each other, the “Western pharmaceutical companies that had transformed themselves from anonymous, low profit chemical suppliers into high profile, top-performing firms” and AIDS activists who were blaming the plague of AIDS in Africa on the actions and decisions made by these pharmaceutical companies (Bartlett & Spar, 2002, p.5). Activist groups were demanding responses from these developed pharmaceutical companies such as the possibility of them giving away their drugs for free to deprived nations, or them loosening their patent rights that had protected their intellectual property. However, can the pharmaceutical companies truly be to blame for the current state of Africa as an underprivileged, poverty-stricken continent?
When examining how pharmaceutical companies should respond to the AIDS plague in Africa,...