Why Do Hundreds of Thousands of Children Die from Malaria Each Year?
A mother takes her son to a Médecins Sans Frontières clinic to be treated for malaria, Lankien, South Sudan, 2005. (AP photo)
April 25, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
An article in the April 13 New York Times poses whether patents and the huge profits they bring with them actually spur the pharmaceutical industry to develop needed drugs—and the energy industry to discover and spread new technologies to replace fossil fuels. The article begins:
Malaria has preyed on humans for centuries. Hundreds of thousands of children die each year from the disease. Considering the market’s size, why haven’t pharmaceutical companies rushed to develop a vaccine against the deadly parasite that causes it?
The answer is easy: There is no money to be made from a vaccine for poor children who could not possibly pay for inoculation.
Now ask yourself these four questions:
No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:13
» For whom and for what does this world capitalist-imperialist system function?
» Why must children at risk for malaria in Africa and elsewhere have their lives yoked to the profit motive in order to survive past the age of five?
» Can humanity really confront climate change and the environmental emergency if the necessary technologies must be fucking “incentivized” by profit-generating “intellectual property rights”?
» Have you read the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, written by Bob Avakian—to learn how a radically different society and economy could utilize resources and knowledge and unleash people and their creativity for the betterment and emancipation of humanity and the protection of the planet?
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