An unusual play, called ‘Cocktail,’ opens tonight at Louisiana State University and its about an unusual woman - Krisana Kraisintu, who challenged the notion of a patented AIDS cocktail and changed the course of the disease in her native Thailand.

She traced the original technology to NIH research. And after run-ins with Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline, the drugmakers relented. Kraisintu now works to provide access to HIV?AIDS drugs in Africa, scaling up manufacturing of generic antiretrovirals.

As Agnes Shanley writes: “Her story is one of courage and tenacity, but underscores the drug industry’s fundamental challenge of balancing the need to protect its intellectual property with the moral imperative to make cures more accessible to people around the world.”

Further reading….
The Swine Palace;
Pharmaceutical Manufacturing;
LSU’s The Daily Reveille.[tags]AIDS, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Krisana Kraisintu[/tags]