anti-antifreeze

(a charitable moment from spammimic)

Did you know doctors routinely inject a mixture of arsenic and antifreeze (melarsopal) into sleeping sickness patients.
There's a more effective, less painful drug - why not use that.

Why?... its not available.

There wasn't enough profit for the drug company so they stopped making it.
It's mostly poor people in Africa who get sleeping sickness and they just don't have what you might call "buying power".
The drug company, Aventis, gave the patent for the drug (DFMO) to the World Health Organization but they don't have the funds to produce it.

What can you do? Check out the Doctors Without Borders Access to Essential Medicines site. Once you are there you can search for "sleeping sickness" or "DFMO" for more info. Doctors Without Borders - which usually goes by it's French name: Medecins San Frontieres - is a terrific organization. They won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. Consider donating so they can pay somebody to make DFMO and we can stop injecting antifreeze.

Just to be cheeky, here is a link to an Aventis Financial Report. It seems that "earnings per share rise 40 percent over 2000".
Congratulations to all shareholders.

Update - 2001Feb15
The N.Y. Times reports Profits on Cosmetic Save a Cure for Sleeping Sickness (Sorry free login required) . So due to a weird twist of fate, it looks like there might be a sleeping sickness drug! You'll notice that Medecins San Frontieres was instrumental in getting this to happen. Even more reason to send some money their way.

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