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Today, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the pharmaceutical monolith that charges nearly $1,000 for a 30 day supply of one of its HIV/AIDS medications, is donating $1 to the National AIDS Fund for each person who simply visits their website and "virtually lights a candle." The tally is up to 916,801. Go light a candle. :tu:
https://www.lighttounite.org/
Consider that candle lit.
How about they not charge $1000/month for medication.
In the fine print: Maximum donation of $100,000, so the equivalent of 100 HIV/AIDS victims medication for one month. Wow, what a drive.
Where did you find max donation of $100,000? I've been looking and I'm not seeing that info....Quote:
Originally Posted by K3V
As someone who can't live without medication, the amounts charged are insane. It costs me $350 to Big Pharm every month, just to stay alive.
Fuck that shit. The sooner these companies and their patents are burnt to the ground, the sooner life can prosper around the world.
what's with all the aids charity out there lately? I didn't even know red meant aids till a few weeks ago. Sprint is selling red phones, there's all kinds of other red ribbons and crap out there that wasn't there before.
Oprah and Bono said its important, so now its important.
Get with it.
Also: Squibb.
lol
squibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbs quibbsquibb
squibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbsquibbs quibbsquibb
Well, December 1st is World AIDS Day and Bono just launched his new campaign to get companies to make red goods and donate to AIDS charities, hence the phone, the red iPod a while back, etc. I've known Red Ribbon was for AIDS since middle school though, you're a bit out of touch or something.Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
I saw it flash up in the bottom-right corner of the animation right before I clicked to light the candle. After the candle is lit I can't find anywhere that it says it again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenchimo Dos
I'll pull up the site at work tomorrow and grab a screenshot.
So... this huge, multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company is going to donate about $1 million to AIDS research? Thats it?
:icepick: is not impressed.
So, what is it thats killing you?Quote:
Originally Posted by icarusfall
Guess I'm out of touch too. I had know idea about this aids awareness stuff. Cept red ribbon, I've known about that for awhile.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nomi
Um, w/o the patents there would be very little incentive for high powered medication to be developed. It sucks yes but we wouldn't be much if any better off, and likely far worse off if the system was made to force drug sales down.Quote:
Originally Posted by icarusfall
Squibb.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhydant
They're pretty vague about that maximum. Does that mean one person can only light 100,000 candles or does it mean that the maximum they're ever going to donate is $100,000? (In which case, they've almost exceeded that by 10 times.)
EDIT: Yeah, $100,000 max.
More like $100,000.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rhydant
Here's the main page before you light the candle, note the bottom-right corner:
Click for full size
Bunch of shit, right there.
$100,000? I bet that's not even a drop in the bucket compared to the CEO's annual bonus.
Really? What the fuck is wrong with you?Quote:
Originally Posted by icarusfall
A really, really bad trip.
Basically. I can't function without psych meds.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rumpy
I know the patents are how they make money, but the terms on most patents are absurd. The pharmaceutical industry has sprouted profit-wings and feeds on the semen of angels made of money. We protect corporations before our own citizens health, and that's fucked. Not to mention the lies they feed the public about side effects and the addictive nature of many of their drugs. Also: Advertising the way they do should be re-criminalized.
The only reason medical companies develop any of these in the first place is to make a profit. Things like AIDS, Hepatitus, etc, etc. could've possibly been cured by now but not much effort has been put into finding a cure. More medical funding is spent on sexual enhancement drugs like Viagra than AIDS research.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bojack
Then if these companies you hate were burnt to the ground, you would cease to function. They are businesses; if they can't make money they won't make drugs- very simple. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars to bring a drug to market. Why would they spend that kind of money and then give away the product for free?Quote:
Originally Posted by icarusfall
It's PR by large drug companies because it's recently been making world news that these companies are pushing for world trade agreements that would extend their patents on drugs to places like Africa, which would make generic drugs illegal to people who can't even afford the generic drugs.Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
Wow, enough money to keep 100 patients alive for a month, stop the fucking presses. Drug companies can eat a bag of dicks. Stop with the positive PR attempt, it insults us all.
This is like mcdonalds giving $.10 from the sale of every mcwhatever to some token charity.
They probably spent more than $100k on the PR campaign.
lolQuote:
Originally Posted by SpoDaddy
Patents in general are out of hand. Software designs, chemicals, and even existing DNA sequences are being patented like crazy, and it's only going to stifle innovation in the long run, since smaller companies will eventually be forced out by the high cost of patent licensing. I don't think patents should be done away with entirely, since the originator of an idea should be given some competitive edge with it, but patents need to expire faster, especially when they're not being actively developed.
I'm surprised McD's hasn't tried to patent the cheeseburger. Shit, they probably nave.
The saddest thing about it all is that most of that money will probably go right back into their pockets.
Meant to say places like Africa, typo. I think the solution is to exclude patent law from industries that are directly crucial to human life (such as pharmeceuticals) in cases where a patient cannot possibly afford to pay. Allow governments to sell generic versions of drugs, at cost, to people that it can be proven cannot afford to pay for them normally. As long as there is tight oversight to prevent fraud this shouldn't hurt drug companies at all, since they're not losing sales. It should help them, since they'd be regarded as heroes for discovering new drugs that all people can then benefit from. They could probably avoid paying taxes altogether if such a law went into effect.
They tried in the late 1960's/early 1970's and failed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mykozo
I remember back when red meant artificial cherry flavor. I liked that meaning better.Quote:
Originally Posted by stormy
Fer reals. After seeing enough ads, I almost want to run out and get herpes. Life with herpes is being a hot, white, middle-upper class 20-something frollicking on the beach, apparently.Quote:
Originally Posted by icarusfall
Are you kidding? A cure for something like that would be massive. Huge PR boosts, government grants out the ass, and they'd have a patent on the cure. The problem is that we don't even know how to cure a cold... viruses just elude us, for whatever reason, and that's what HIV and Hepatitis happen to be.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gohron
It's not a big conspiracy keeping us from finding cures to these diseases. We just have no idea how to cure them yet.
*Commander, we're picking up incomming squibb on the radar. 20...30...no. Jesus, there must be at least 80 squibb. Range 52 megameters and closing. Fast.Quote:
Originally Posted by ChaoofNee
-No. It can't...it can't end like this. Not after.... DAMN SQUIBB!
*Long-range sensors are gathering data. At the front of the formation...it's. Oh dear God, they've got an omnicron squibb. 48 megameters and closing.
-So, doctor, now do you regret advising the panel to shut down the squibb project?
>I regret nothing. The squibb project was misguided and ineffective. Something had to be said. I stand by my beliefs.
-With 80 squibb out there, you may have to die for your beliefs.
>We all must die. Someday.
*Commander! Squibb at 37 megameters and still closing. What do we do?
-This ends here! *slams fist* John, we do the only thing we can do.
*No! We can't!
-We can and we must. And may God have mercy on our souls.
*But...
>He's right, John.
*Bastard squibb.... BASTARD SQUIBB!!! YAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! *pulls lever*
Quote:
Originally Posted by sethsez
Well, I shouldn't say so much a cure but rather along the lines of an innoculation because as far as I know, there hasn't been a single reliable cure for ANY virus out there. Innoculations for AIDS would probably cost these companies tons of money in the long-run I would think.
AIDS is only really prominant outside the US though and the cases in the US are generally isolated in the poorer areas of the country (though there is exceptions of course, not saying safe sex isn't a good idea). My dad has Hepatitus C and went on new medication for it that completely fucked him up and possibly did permanant damage to his body but the company that put out the medication refused to disclose any information on possible side-effects of the medicine they put him on. Ultimately he chose to go off of it which means when his liver fails that he will die which unfortunately may not be that long from now.
Here's a similar thing, but about Child Pornography.
http://www.lightamillioncandles.com/
Odd. The cat who made that website obviously knew what he was doing, but the very first page is LITTERED with JPEG compression artifacts. That image should have been a GIF or PNG. Hell, the font is so common it should have just been text and not an image at all. Odd. I'm not being sarcastic either. I'm puzzled.Quote:
Originally Posted by arjue
This always shocks me. Between 1 and 20 and 1 in 10 Americans have AIDS? Part of me is shocked, and part of me doesn't belive the statistic. One way or another, it means several people I know have AIDS and I don't know it, because I know a fucking lot of people.Quote:
Originally Posted by AstroBlue
I like this whole cost-free charity trend. You get to feel good about yourself for doing 'the right thing' and it doesn't cost you a dollar.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheebs
Erm...it says 0.5% to 1%. That's between 1 in 200 and 1 in 100 :P
It's also fairly likely that you don't know anyone with AIDS as it's not a very widespread virus in this country anymore and is generally only really prevelant in very poor areas. I know a person whose had it for quite some time and didn't know it for a long time, he had two daughters and a wife and somehow none of them were infected.
Spiders are the worst.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rumpy
You know Magic Johnson?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gohron
What do you call Magic Johnson on rollerblades? Rolaids olololol
As far as these companies making profit goes, welcome to capitalism!
I'm in a med-tech class that is HIV/AIDS study (that's all it is) and we've had some speakers come in with crazy stories. Heroin addict knocked one girl up, went to Florida to escape responsibility, then knocked another girl up while the other one was still pregnant. This was after breaking up with his girlfriend who he already had a child with. None of the three women or the three children contracted the virus. Crazy shit can happen. It's more normal for children to not get the virus because the contraction rate is under 5% now if the pregnant mothers get on medication. A HIV+ mother can just take the meds and have a c-section (most paid by the state, in Ohio anyway) and chances are the kid will be perfectly fine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gohron
You can go to jail for not telling your partners you have AIDS right? I thought I heard something like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nomi
I was under the assumption there was a trial where a conviction was handed down on Murder 1 charges for just such a thing.
As far as my knowledge goes, it's attempted murder until the person dies. Then the charges are bumped up to murder 1.
I always thought wearing red ribbons meant you were drug free.
At least that's what I was taught in my middle school.
Your middle school sucks.
No, but here's a list of Mickey D's various legal cases over the years. Of special interest is the "Trademark and copyright disputes" section.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mykozo
This is true.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenchimo Dos