Health and the Profit Motive.

Medical research by major pharmaceutical firms is apparently a noble effort to combat diseases but we live inside capitalism so that nobility is tempered by the profit motive.   AstraZeneca, Britain's second-largest drugs company has decided to shut down its research into tropical diseases, tuberculosis and malaria because Pascal Soriot, its chief executive wants to cut expenditure and halt a decline in profits.  'Bayer landed in hot water last week when Marijn Dekkers, the German company's chief executive described one of the company's cancer drugs as a medicine "developed for Western patients who can afford it" and said it was not for Indians".' (Times, 31 January) These cuts in medical research are happening in a society where 1.3 million deaths occur because of tuberculosis and 1,300 children die every day from malaria according to World Health Organisation figures. RD