It's the story of ordinary people standing up to unaccountable power. Dietrich, Bryant University In his January 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for the U. Director: Dylan Mohan Gray Cast: Yusuf Hamied, George W. He decided to make the film three years later. Do pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to save lives? Dylan Mohan Gray's important award-winning film Fire In The Blood raises difficult questions and finds that the answers are not as simple. In exploring the macrocosm of big industry and the microcosm of individual people Fire in the Blood makes clear that we are all responsible for this crisis and there is something we can do to influence change.
The surprise quickly was followed by excitement, tempered by skepticism. It makes sense for the public to foot the lion's share of the bill. Bush, Indira Gandhi, Donald G. Pharmaceutical companies could set prices on a market-to-market basis, but that could potentially generate new headaches, like smuggling of branded drugs from low-income countries to wealthier ones. But what about poor people in the developed world who lack access to life-saving medications? Numbers and statistics, too, are employed with great effect at carefully chosen moments. Suddenly, lives that were considered lost were being saved. The quotes are chosen with care, and woven seamlessly into the narrative.
It is both a heart-breaking and a heart-warming story all in the same film and it is elevated by exceptional access to captivating moments of deep humanity and emotion. Although Fire in the Blood may be one-sided at times, its message remains important. Archived from on 5 August 2012. And Gray does so with furious zeal. While outdated treatments can be bought at a fraction of what they cost when they first hit the market, newer, more effective drugs. The film was shot on four continents from March 2008 to the end of 2010, while editing was completed in 2012.
But to have it said out loud in a documentary backed by solid, detailed research is rare. The discovery of penicillin made once-fatal infections easily curable, and global vaccination schemes have all but eradicated smallpox—a dreadful disease, terminal in up to one-third of cases. Such is the clarity of his ideological stance that any grandstanding would feel redundant. Fire in the Blood Modern medicine is one of humanity's greatest achievements. A film by Dylan Mohan Gray , narrated by William Hurt. That was a small price to pay, perhaps, to be given new life after standing at death's door. Selected Carnegie Council Resources Derek Yach, PepsiCo; Yanzhong Huang, Council on Foreign Relations How can global health be improved? Its direct approach builds an argument that is not only striking, revealing and outrageous, but simply necessary.
The film strikes the right balance of outrage, hopefulness and despair, compellingly arguing the case that a profit-driven, racially motivated collusion exists between Big Pharma and the U. Filmmaker Dylan Mohan Gray is on a crusade against the pharmaceutical industry's profits-first approach. Fire in the Blood is absolutely essential viewing. But where do we draw the line between the patents that should be upheld, and those that ought to be broken? Pharmaceutical companies showed no interest in lowering prices until developing world generics manufacturers took matters into their own hands, ignoring the patents altogether. The pharmaceutical industry, on its end, argued that patents are crucial to innovation, and that failure to enforce them would discourage further research and development.
PepsiCo executive Derek Yach speaks about the positive changes corporations are making, and Professor Yanzhong Huang discusses China's health care challenges. Because research and development costs are so high, companies have no incentive to develop new drugs and technologies without assurance of exclusive rights over them, since freeloading generic drug manufacturers would run innovating firms out of business. This ranks the film within the 5-10% best-reviewed films of 2013. Ethical Issues and Discussion Questions 1. Clearly, something should be done. Arguing that intellectual property laws reinforce inequality, economist Joseph Stiglitz that Western patent laws must be entirely revamped.
As he sees it, the patent system doesn't work as well for medicines as it does for, say, consumer electronics. But worldwide efforts to stamp out disease are the exception rather than the rule. And the majority of pharmaceutical multinationals have been zealous in guarding the price line to such absurd limits that those who live beneath poverty lines have had no access to expensive drugs. Archived from on 19 December 2013. Fire in the Blood burrows deep — and sets your blood boiling. Comments are automatically posted live; however, reserves the right to take it down at any time.
They do not represent the views or opinions of The Indian Express Group or its staff. And comes to the inescapable conclusion: that millions of lives could have been saved if the rampaging greed of the pharma companies, and their cohorts in high places, had been replaced by the desire to save lives. The hero of the 1. Should patents come with strings attached? But omitting them altogether seems like a serious oversight. Workshop for Ethics in Business, December 2008 Thomas Pogge, Yale University Philosopher Thomas Pogge explains his proposal for dealing with the thorny intersection of public health, property rights, and poverty. Public Ethics Radio, August 2008 John W. It's an angry-making extension of themes less globally explored in the recent Dallas Buyers Club.
Cipla's generic inexpensive antiretroviral drugs priced at a fraction of the branded medicine were a true game changer in the '90s. Genuine hope is rare these days -- you'll find it in this film. It is easy to see why Gray would choose to downplay positive statistics; emphasis on progress might put a damper on the viewer's moral outrage. The commentary was fair and nuanced and, I felt, well-balanced - bringing together the contribution or lack thereof of different stakeholders internationally, to tell one coherent story about the struggle to make life-saving treatment available. Drug companies charging nearly 30 times production cost for a product people desperately need for survival is clearly an extreme case, but what if they charged three times the production cost? Because there are only so many ways in which a single disease or symptom can be effectively treated, drug patents often create monopolies, thus presenting consumers with only two options: buy this particular drug, or die. Indeed, a 2006 by the Global Forum for Health Research found that public sources pay for 84. He recalls spending one-third of his judicial salary on three daily pills.
Do pharmaceutical companies have a right to set drug prices themselves? Drug pricing has always been a contentious issue. Can this be remedied, or can there never be a true free market for life-saving commodities? Running time 87 minutes Country India Language English Fire in the Blood is a 2013 by depicting the intentional obstruction of access to low-cost used in the treatment of to people in and other parts the global south, driven by multinational pharmaceutical companies holding monopolies and various Western governments above all those of the United States, and Switzerland consistently doing these companies' bidding. Is 20 years a reasonable time for drug companies to regain their investments? Moreover, by creating effective monopolies, strictly enforced patents allow companies to charge astronomical prices for life-saving drugs. These facts have elicited strongly divergent reactions, and views about the appropriate response to this crisis have varied widely. With dramatic past victories having given way to serious setbacks engineered far from public view, the real fight for access to life-saving medicine is almost certainly just beginning. The film is narrated by -winning actor , who lent his voice to the film on a basis because he felt the story and subject matter were so important. Critics respond that drug patents derive heavily from publicly funded research.