Drug Deal

Drug Deal

By Kelly Hearn, AlterNet
Posted on May 25, 2005, Printed on May 25, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/22081/

For Luis Lopez, a 42-year-old single dad in Guatemala, globalization has nada to do with economics or democracy. On the contrary, for Lopez, it's about something much more basic: los anti-marcas (against brands), los genericos -- the cheap, generic medications that poor AIDS patients like him need to stay alive.

More than 78,000 Guatemalans are currently living with HIV/AIDS , according to Doctors Without Borders (also called Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF). Approximately 13,500 of them are in urgent need of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment; only 3,600 were receiving it as of December 2004. If, in coming weeks, Congress ratifies the bill President Bush signed last year -- the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) -- many of these patients could wind up literally dying for cheap drugs.