Films > Life Films >Kill or Cure?
Kill or Cure?
For over a decade, India has been the powerhouse behind the production of low cost 
generic drugs for the developing world - spearheading the revolution in affordable anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) for AIDS sufferers in Africa and Asia. But after becoming a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the introduction of the new Patent Law in January 2005 to conform with WTO rules, India's US$4.5 billion pharmaceutical industry finds itself at a crossroads.
Will the new law undermine provision of affordable medicine to poor people? 
Will they die as a result, as leading scientists like Dr.Y.K. Hamied, head of one of India's best known generic drugs companies, CIPLA, argues? "What did Indira Gandhi say in 1981 at the WHO? That there should be no patenting of life and death. And that medicines should be free of patents. She said that in '81. Why isn't the government of India following her ideals today?" Or will the new Patent Law mean instead that Indians will now benefit from high quality patented medicines, as India's Health Minister Kamal Natgh argues, and also India will reap the R & D rewards on new drugs developed by Indian scientists for the global market?
This Life explores the case for and against.
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