Health For Sale

The Debate Over Big Pharma

Are the world's largest drug companies, paradoxically, major obstacles to making a healthier world?

HEALTH FOR SALE focuses on Big Pharma, the ten largest pharmaceutical makers, who account for 500 billion dollars of world health spending a year and whose 205 billion dollars in pre-tax profits were more than the combined profits of the 490 other Fortune 500 companies. Officials from all sides debate the impact of drug companies' patenting, "intellectual property," pricing and new product development strategies on global public health. These policies, according to Nobel Prize winning economist and former World Bank Chief Economist, Joseph Stiglitz "are condemning billions of the world's poorest citizens to death."

HEALTH FOR SALE, through a close examination of one essential industry, calls into question whether global markets and corporations can be trusted to serve the interests of a majority of the earth's population.

"Health for Sale takes extremely complex issues involving intellectual property, access to medicines and the shaping of health research priorities and provides a morally disturbing and yet balanced view of the impact these issues are having on the lives of millions of vulnerable people around the globe." - Heinz Klug, Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin