There are some people who are extremely skilful at changing around discourses and narratives to serve their ends. That is how I would say it in very short terms. What we've seen and experienced over my now 20 years of working on the access to medicines issue is a shifting landscape in the pharmaceutical industry in terms of how to respond to the growing understanding that morally and ethically we are on the wrong path in terms of ensuring that people around the world are able to access the treatments they need.
I also want to recognize that pharmaceutical companies have made big steps in the right direction. They have. We have to acknowledge that. Also, we have to acknowledge that the role pharmaceutical companies can play is a very important role. We have to acknowledge that as well, but we are still unable to break down this barrier that pharmaceutical companies are there to make profits.
That's what a company does. They have stakeholders or shareholders. What we're talking about is a humanitarian goal of making sure that people are able to access the drugs they need. These two goals are in conflict with each other. We shouldn't expect a pharmaceutical company to be a humanitarian organization, just like I wouldn't like my organization to be a for-profit organization.
What we're talking about is, how do we find a way through? This question now—we shouldn't be talking about and starting to get obsessed about cost instead of access—is actually just another conflation of the same argument. Instead, we've seen that access has become the terme du jour. It's much more of a politically correct term these days.
Let's stop talking about the money. Let's talk about how we make this accessible to people. The problem is that a lot of that becomes window-dressing, because deep down it's never going to be accessible. Bedaquiline is a brilliant example.
We have this new treatment for hepatitis C, sofosbuvir, a name that I can never pronounce. These things are.... We can talk about access programs that pharmaceutical companies have, but this is not a systemic response to a crisis. What we're talking about here is how to get something that's systemic, that's really incorporated inside our system, to make sure these drugs are accessible.
I'm sorry to say that I think that's just another contortion of the narrative to serve the ends of profit.