ACT-UP hits the wrong target

Topics: Misc
23 Nov 1992

From:

On the 11/15 60 Minutes, there was a piece about ACT-UP and its acts
of civil disobediance toward drug companies. While I'm sympathetic
to some of what they do, they are undermining their own cause in
this case. The basic theme is that they were blaming drug companies
for charging too much or taking too long to find new drugs. The
threat was they would shut down a company with blockades and/or give
it bad press if it didn't lower its prices. If ACT-UP actually thinks
that research depends only on political pressure, maybe they should
lobby for a proof of P<>NP ;-) It's even worse than that, their
tactics are making the situation worse. It has become politically
impossible for a drug company to recover their investment in the
research and testing of a drug. In that kind of environment, who
can blame the drug companies for failing to research AIDS?

The complaint that drug companies take too long to get drugs to the
market is even more ridiculous. That's the FDA's fault. Companies
would like to sell their drugs immediately. The FDA is also responsible
for raising the price of drugs. It costs about $5M to get any new
drug approved. ACT-UP should spend
more time blockading the FDA instead (it does already consider the
FDA an enemy). Actually, ACT-UP should vote Libertarian and simply
get rid of the FDA :-)


Though public opinion of ACT-UP itself probably doesn't have much
impact on their effectiveness, when PWAs lock themselves to office
furniture and scream "murderer" at drug company executives while
taking little or no responsbility for their own mistakes, it doesn't
do anything for their credibility.

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