Fire in the Blood

Providing an unforgiving look at the Western pharmaceutical market, this documentary depicts the expensive struggle of acquiring AIDS treatments in the late ‘90s – with drug companies charging a hefty price at the expense of millions of lives. Features contributions from Bill Clinton, Desmond Tutu and Joseph Stiglitz.

“In 1996, the development of antiretroviral drug therapies may not have cured AIDS, but the breakthrough made the disease treatable—if patients could afford the hefty price tag. For millions in the developing world, the cost kept essential medicines out of reach and meant they would continue to die. Hope came in the form of low-cost generic drugs manufactured in India and elsewhere, but pharmaceutical companies—favouring patents over patients and profits over the prevention of unnecessary deaths—threatened legal action against any company that dared circumvent their control of the market. The struggle to overcome this inconceivably greedy blockade—with literally life or death stakes—is at the heart of Dylan Mohan Gray’s absorbing documentary.” (Sundance) 

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