Big Pharma Doesn’t Treat Sick People, It Treats Rich People—Let's Change That | Nicole Hassoun

Big Pharma Doesn’t Treat Sick People, It Treats Rich People—Let's Change That

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One of the world's open secrets is that we don't look after all sick people in the same way. Why does back pain in the U.S. get a treatment developed faster than fatal dysentery in Central Africa? It's not a huge riddle: research and development programs of the pharmaceutical industry treat the diseases and ailments that will turn the highest profit. To solve a problem this large and unjust, Nicole Hassoun, a residential fellow with the Hope & Optimism Project at Cornell University, is employing the virtue she terms 'creative resolve'. When obstacles get in our way, Hassoun says we need to think innovatively about how can we change the problem or look at it differently. If we can't appeal to Big Pharma's better nature, then we have to come up with more creative solutions. And Hassoun has one: fair trade pharmaceuticals. Here, she explains her idea to incentivize cheaper drugs and medical access to combat global health crises. This video was filmed as part of the Los Angeles Hope Festival, a collaboration between Big Think and Hope & Optimism.

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NICOLE HASSOUN:

Nicole Hassoun is a residential fellow with the Hope & Optimism Project at Cornell University and an associate professor in philosophy at Binghamton University. From 2006-2012 she was an assistant professor in philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, affiliated with Carnegie Mellon's Program on International Relations and the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Bioethics and Health Law. In 2009-2010 she held a postdoctoral position at Stanford University and visited at the United Nation's World Institute for Development Economics Research in Helsinki. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Center for Poverty Research in Salzburg, The Franco-Swedish Program in Philosophy and Economics in Paris and the Center for Advanced Studies in Frankfurt. She has published more than fifty papers in journals like the American Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of Development Economics, The Journal of Applied Ethics, The American Journal of Bioethics, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Public Affairs Quarterly, The European Journal of Philosophy, Environmental Ethics, the Journal of Social Philosophy, Utilitas, and Philosophy and Economics. Her first book Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations was published with Cambridge University Press in 2012 and her manuscript Global Health Impact: Extending Access on Essential Medicines for the Poor is under contract with Oxford University Press.

Nicole Hassoun also heads the Global Health Impact project intended to extend access to medicines to the global poor (Global Health Impact). The project launched at the World Health Organization in January 2015 and has been featured on National Public Radio (New effort ranks drugmakers by impact). The Wall Street Journal (A New Index Measures Impact Pharma Has on Infectious Diseases) and Capital New York (SUNY professor indexes pharma companies' impact). The project is intended to assist policy makers in setting targets for and evaluating efforts to increase access to essential medicines. Hassoun is the author of Globalization and Global Justice: Shrinking Distance, Expanding Obligations.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Nicole Hassoun: I argue that human rights should give us hope and inspire us to stake our claims and help everyone live a dignified life. I think hope supports this virtue of creative resolve, which is a fundamental commitment to trying to find ways of fulfilling rights. Creative resolve is a personal as well as political virtue so that's the kind of thing that individuals can have in their own personal lives as well as in working together to bring about positive change. When each of us find obstacles to doing things that we really believe in, then I think often we need to think creatively about how can we change the problem or look at the problem differently? People might ask, 'Well, how far do you have to go with this? Aren’t we actually facing resource constraints? Aren’t there times we have to let people die?' And I was listening to this podcast of I think it was in New Orleans where they had a hospital and they had to do triage because the helicopters were coming to save everybody and it was in the flood.

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