The $200 billion industry

I went to a big dinner sponsored by a drug company once. I was a student and I must say it felt pretty good to be catered to; to be served great food just for listening to a doctor speak. I guess that's how they get you, they make you feel smart and important and feed you $50 steaks and hire attractive people who know nothing about medicine to sell their product. In fact, I wouldn't doubt that somehow writing a prescription for that medication might conjure up feeling satiated and make me write more of it. I am weak like that.

Being there, despite being surrounded by spoiled malcontents, felt good. For about an hour. Then the guilt set in. What I didn't realize then is that those expenses are exactly why the elderly, like my grandmother who waited until off-peak times to turn her heat on in order to afford her medications, are on buses to Canada and holding signs in Central Park begging for money not for food, but for much-needed prescription medication. The sad part is that extravagant dinners and lunches happen every hour of every day in America, inflating egos and expanding waistlines, and ultimately increasing the already rapacious prices drug companies charge.

Furthermore, the pharmaceutical industry would rather develop more expensive everyday and, might I add, already extant forms of medications for higher profits than work on, say, antibiotics for multi-drug resistant strains of TB that are killing people in third-world countries every day. Maybe if they spent more on R&D and less on the barrage of marketing and administration lives could actually be saved. After all, isn't that the point?

So, I was thinking...

The richest country in the world should not have 45 million people living below the poverty level and still be pushing democracy and capitalism down everyone else's throat. I really am pessimistic about the future as everyone would like to live very well but there aren't enough resources for that to happen; those of us (me included) who live too well must live less well. At least the British Chancellor has been successful in forgiving 40 billion pounds worth of debt to some of the poorest nations; it isn't enough but it's a start. Bill Gates is doing his bit but as an individual his wealth is worth about 10 small nations and his house cost $12 million some time back, so he could do a lot more! I'm rambling.