THERE’S something unsettling about corporations making huge profits from people’s suffering. No matter how often healthcare companies insist that they make our lives better, the balance between commercial success and the public good is a difficult one to find. In the past, countries as diverse as Spain, Italy, Turkey, India and Argentina chose to restrict or prohibit the patenting of pharmaceuticals. Now these unilateral solutions are being stamped out by the World Trade Organization (WTO), which lays down rules that all member countries and all sectors of industry have to follow.
But this still leaves us with a problem. We…
