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Marketing AID$ is big bucks (updated)

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Mar 062009
 

It is not just about saving lives or finding a cure. It’s very much about making money, and AIDS treatments have long been considered a global marketing opportunity.

 

$700 AIDS Marketing Report from aarkresearch

Mainstream AIDS proponents hate to have this issue brought up and would like to pretend that no one is getting rich from the current test-everyone-and-give-them-drugs public health strategy.

Yet virus co-discoverers Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier have become millionaires thanks to the profits from their patent on so-called “HIV tests”.

Pharmaceutical companies pillage consumers with expensive drugs, earning higher profits than any other industry. While the rest of the global economy has been tanking recently, Gilead just reported its fourth-quarter profit last year rose 41 percent on increased sales of its AIDS drug Truvada.

An advanced google search of Peter Staley’s blog at poz.com (owned by the appropriately named aidsmeds.com, which Staley founded) could be read like an insider’s guide for anyone considering investing in pharmaceutical stocks. That’s not surprising, considering Staley was a Wall Street bond trader in the 1980s, before becoming a professional AIDS drug activist.

TheBody.com, arguably one of the top rated AIDS websites, is funded almost entirely by pharmaceutical giants. Plenty of traffic to that site is assured by patients seeking relief from medication side effects on one of the “Ask the Experts” forums there.

TheBody.com: Just another front for BigPharma?

TheBody.com: just another front for BigPharma?

There’s so much money to be made on AIDS$ that a company called aarkresearch is even selling a 25-page report (see graphic at top of post) entitled Global HIV Market: An Analysis for $700! Better hurry, I hear they’re going fast.

What’s in this report? I didn’t buy it, so I don’t know more than what aarkresearch wants to say on their blog:

The report outlines major countries affected from HIV virus and death rates. It also gives an overview of HIV virus and therapies in demand. The report presents overview of global market, HIV in US, UK, Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights major markets for HIV drugs with overall market value and major drugs revenue.

The report discusses the opportunities prevailing in the HIV drugs market and issues affecting the growth. It also talks about competition prevalent in the market. It profiles major players with an overview of their business, key financials and business strategies.

Of course not everyone is making bucks on AIDS. Still, there is a huge question begging to be asked when an alleged epidemic disease and its treatments are considered simply major marketing “opportunities”.

UPDATED:

How could I have overlooked the (RED) campaign?!

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  • http://resistanceisfruitful..com/ Jonathan

    This post has been updated to include the (RED) campaign as another example of marketing with AIDS. The (RED) campaign promotes upscale products with a feel-good promise that a portion of profits will be used to benefit BigPharma by purchasing (toxic) AIDS drugs for poor Africans, regardless of their access to nutritional food, clean water, or basic health services.

  • Felix

    Hi Jonathan,

    Don’t want to be accused of “rosy optimism.” When I mean last gasp, I don’t necessarily mean it will end soon.

    I do think that the massive scaremongering won’t work again, though. People can see through it. Homophobia has subsided. Western Medicine has been discredited in many important ways. People have to take care of their OWN health, and not outsource it to experts.

  • Felix

    AIDS has degenerated into a racket. You can’t make money in the health industry, unless you sell sickness.

    Selling AIDS has been a key component of the medical establishment. It worked once, but it won’t work forever. It failed with the bird flu, swine flu, west nile virus, ebola virus.

    AIDS Inc. will be the last gasp of a rotten regime. Too bad so many people committed suicide on HIV diagnoses in the past or were poisoned with AZT or were simply stigmatized into depression.

    You’re doing good things here, Jonathan.

    In good health,

    Felix

    • http://resistanceisfruitful..com/ Jonathan

      Felix: I wish I was as optimistic as you that AIDS will be the last gasp. I fear it may become a toehold for taking us even further down the road to a 100% synthetic, mechanical model of medical care that only recognizes “health” as a word to be co-opted. Of course I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought all hope was lost, so thanks for the encouraging words.