For Profit Harms Danna Tortal, Fizza Alam, Adriana Sowell, Justin Hull, Joshua Waxman

This podcast details patent protections which acted to hinder South Africa’s ability to purchase life-saving generic medication for its population during the AIDS epidemic. This draws upon frameworks of health equity, marginalization, and human rights to understand intellectual property laws (IP) which perpetuated racialized capitalism making South African people more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. We discuss how these laws protected the profit margins of large pharmaceutical companies, who engaged in clear price gouging by making these vital drugs too costly for many nations in the Global South. The patent protection laws allowed multinational pharmaceutical companies to block the entrance of any generic medications into the market which directly deprived PLWA from affordable and accessible health care. Their strong opposition to accessible care is exemplified in the 1998 case where 39 pharmaceutical companies sued the South African government for the deprivation of their intellectual property. Simultaneously, social movements opposed the privatization of antiretroviral drugs and put pressure on the government reflecting an anti-colonial approach. Our panel seeks to emphasize that when discussing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa it is imperative to acknowledge the decolonizing work of social movements that has shaped the way HIV/AIDS epidemic is experienced in South Africa.