Wired in an article titled “The treasure of Mumbai” is calling the Indian drug manufacturer Cipla a pirate. Reason?, they sell generic copies of patented drugs. Wired goes on to say,

What Hamied does is legal in India and the countries where Cipla sells drugs. But the company is still making copies largely without permission of the people who hold the patents on the compounds. So to most of the international pharmaceutical industry, Hamied is a pirate.

The problem now is that medical field is now controlled by big and greedy companies (that includes cipla). A person must die if he doesn’t have the money to buy a drug. Even when it is possible to manufacture and sell the drug at a lower price affordable to him. Why? because we should preserve intellectual property rights! That seems pretty nasty to me.

The wired article starts with the following lines. I agree with what Hamied has said (except the skin color part, I would reword it as “just because originator wants to make more money?”).

Forty years ago, a british company called ICI Pharmaceuticals developed a potent high blood pressure medication called propranolol. It was the first beta blocker, a class of drugs that inhibits fight-or-flight hormones like adrenaline. But it was expensive. So Yusuf Hamied, a 34-year-old chemist at an Indian drugmaker, got his company to start manufacturing a cheaper version. ICI protested to the Indian government, and Hamied found himself face to face with prime minister Indira Gandhi. “Should millions of Indians be denied the use of a lifesaving drug just because the originator doesn’t like the color of our skin?” he asked her.