Pharmanomics at the Pig
BARBARA ECHLIN of Bexhill & Hastings Global Justice Now invites readers to the launch of Nick Dearden’s latest book: Pharmanomics: How Big Pharma Destroys Global Health
Two years ago, while we in the UK had been offered two Covid-19 vaccine doses and were starting to hear about a booster campaign, most countries around the world hadn’t got close to vaccinating even their frontline health workers. It was a shocking moment which highlighted the profound inequality and injustice of our world.
The problem was not simply that Britain hadn’t sold any vaccines, nor that it had failed to donate any vaccines, as bad as that was. There was a deeper problem. We’d effectively put Big Pharma bosses in charge of our vaccine rollout, even though those medicines had been developed with public money. Those bosses were now refusing to share the vaccine know-how with the many countries which would have been capable of producing more.
In our global economy, corporate profits were shown to be more important than millions of people’s lives, more important than ending a world-changing pandemic as quickly as possible.
Nick Dearden explains: “The more I looked into it, the more I came to understand why Big Pharma repeatedly put profits before lives. From the spread of HIV in Southern Africa, to the opioid crisis in the US, to the failure to invest in desperately needed new antibiotics, the way we make medicines is utterly broken. It’s the economic model of the industry – the ‘pharmanomics’ – that needs changing.”
Join us at 6pm, Friday 13 October, The Pig, 37 White Rock, Hastings, where Nick Dearden will present his new book. Signed copies will be available at the event from Hastings Book shop, who are supporting the launch.
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