Hi, I have a few short reflections to share in written form after reading chapter 5 ("PHARMACOLOGY") from Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant before our video chat tomorrow at 12p ET.

As usual, we'll have our video chat on Saturday at 12pm ET; you can join here. We'll talk about chapter 5 of Health Communism (and whatever you read this week).

PHARMACOLOGY

With TRIPS, recognizing intellectual property of all kinds—including pharmaceutical patents—was made a condition of international trade participation for World Trade Organization members, and correspondingly tied to existing mechanisms of state and imperial punishment for trade violations. ... As Amy Kapczynski has noted, the link between intellectual property protections, global trade regimes, and state power has produced a "persistent threat of unilateral retaliation" for states that would ignore or reject international corporations' patent rights.

... this scenario is not an outlier; it is the desired outcome of the TRIPS agreement. These actions are now a matter of course when pharmaceutical companies feel threatened by the prospect of surplus nations rejecting property rights to address the health of their populations.

As T&D gained notoriety outside of the group, they became increasingly emboldened to moderate the focus of ACT UP's organizing. This was perhaps most evident in the deprioritization of organizing efforts around non-pharmaceutical HIV/AIDS interventions like condoms and needle exchange programs. Though there was great demand for this work in the community, and though many within ACT UP felt that there was great urgency to pursue these political projects, it was difficult to gain support or attention from what had become the dominant group within the organization.

George Carter, interviewed in 2007, portrayed this tension as such: ... GC: ... there was this fear. Because the industry was, was and is holding all our lives, mine included ... hostage. We're being held hostage by them, because they say, "if you fuck with us too much, we'll stop looking at your drugs, we'll stop developing them. And then where will you be?"

Reflections

The last quotation I'm surfacing is the one that's the most salient to me, and I think the entry point into talking about my thoughts about this chapter, so I guess I'll work backwards; this chapter lays bare something that I feel really strongly about in other aspects of my life, and that I was kind of taken aback to see in this interaction: the recognition that the status quo at the time (and, indeed, now, as Carter says) was one of begging for our lives, or "being held hostage". I can't read this quote and think anything except that we have to destroy the political economy that creates this hostage situation, this desperate state where people have to beg for medical care from pharmaceutical companies.

And this dynamic pervades medical development across the spectrum and across boundaries (eg when "surplus nations" prioritize the lives of their people, the retribution is swift and wide-reaching, threatening to cast the country into turmoil and chaos - because chaos is the primary export of the US). To look at the world as it exists - to see that the United States is readily invested in the capacity to annihilate a population if they won't die within the market's grasp (and, tellingly, not invested under any administration in the capacity to get people basic COVID tests, face masks, vaccines, either within the United States or beyond, where COVID also is) - to look at things as they are and to say that this is how things should be - even in broad strokes, with minor fixes at the edges - strikes me as obstinately stupid at best, and on the side of death at worst.

Buy the book

If you haven't bought the book yet, you can still catch up. You can buy it here. Purchases made through the Workshops4Gaza fundraiser send proceeds (or more, if you opt to donate more) to The Sameer Project.

If you can't buy the book (or can't buy it from Open Poetry because of shipping constraints or something), please consider making a donation directly to The Sameer Project, if you have the money for it. If you don't please consider sharing the book (or the reading group) with comrades and other like-minded friends.

That's all for now; hope to talk tomorrow.