OK, let me be a devil's advocate for a minute, before we get the pitchforks once again. Let's remember this:
> Gilead Science was first out the gate, bringing the new hep C drugs Harvoni and Sovaldi to market in 2014 and 2015, respectively. And they worked great: More than 90 percent of patients taking the new drugs saw the hep C virus wiped out in three months, and without the side effects that made interferon treatments so intolerable.
So, Gilead is exactly the company that created these drugs from the very beginning. I'm looking at it this way: in 2013 (situation A), there was no cure ("cure" is a simplification, of course, but for this kind of analysis it's not an important detail.). In 2016 (situation B), there is a cure, but it costs $86k.
Now, the moral question here is very simple: when you change the world (as Gilead did) from situation A to situation B, is it net good or net evil deed? In which world of these two would you prefer to live?
> Gilead Science was first out the gate, bringing the new hep C drugs Harvoni and Sovaldi to market in 2014 and 2015, respectively. And they worked great: More than 90 percent of patients taking the new drugs saw the hep C virus wiped out in three months, and without the side effects that made interferon treatments so intolerable.
So, Gilead is exactly the company that created these drugs from the very beginning. I'm looking at it this way: in 2013 (situation A), there was no cure ("cure" is a simplification, of course, but for this kind of analysis it's not an important detail.). In 2016 (situation B), there is a cure, but it costs $86k.
Now, the moral question here is very simple: when you change the world (as Gilead did) from situation A to situation B, is it net good or net evil deed? In which world of these two would you prefer to live?