Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline pledges cheap medicine for world’s poor
Head of GSK shocks industry with challenge to other ‘big pharma’ companies

Maybe this will turn out to be one of those P.R. stunts that look good until it’s discovered, weeks later, to be nothing but a way of dumping unused inventory or undermining the competition. Time will tell. But from the reactions of folks at Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders, GlaxoSmithKline’s CEO Andrew Witty is actually enacting company policies that will potentially (a) help people, and (b) detract from the company’s bottom line.

Wouldn’t it be swell to read an article about a highly-compensated banking executive saying “Damn it! I’m going to work without pay for the next 5 years until we are able to turn this economy around. I can live off my savings from the $47 zillion dollars I’ve already been paid for running this company into the ground making loans that a loan shark wouldn’t touch. So what if I need to sell the house in East Hampton and send my kids to public school? They’ll survive. I will be a role model of good and valiant effort to them, rather than a role model of unmitigated greed.”

And then I woke up.

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