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Summary: Medicine, Malice And Monopoly

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“Medicine, Malice and Monopoly”- this is what the documentary Fire In The Blood by Dylan Mohan Gray talks about. The film was shot across four continents and focuses on the destruction and mass killing that was caused by intentional obstruction caused by Antiretroviral Drugs or the ARVs used for the treatment of HIV from reaching the common people. This monopoly of the Western Pharmaceutical companies was empowered by the patent monopolies and the government doing their bidding. This movie covers the views of the former US president Bill Clinton, intellectual property activist James Love, global health reporter Donald McNeil, HIV treatment activist Zackie Achmat, pioneering generic drugmaker Yusuf Hamied, former Pfizer executive Peter Rost and many more people. The movie is very much impactful as it exposes the reality of the Western Pharmaceutical companies of how they use the patent law to keep the profit exceptionally high at the expense of people’s lives. This documentary gives a clear differentiation of the haves and the have-nots. This helps us relate to the economic differences of the society and the simultaneous consequences that the people of these two stratas have to face because of the power government provides through patent laws and the unintervention of the government to revise these laws for the betterment of the society. The movie also depicts the power of media in influencing the government to persuade the president in revising the patent laws and make an
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