Dallas Buyers Club Essay

Dallas Buyers Club directed by Jean-Marc Vallee begins with Ron Woodroof, an electrician and a rodeo cowboy in Texas in mid 1980s, being diagnosed with AIDS and given 30 days to live. After a few days of denial, Woodroof heard about AZT, a drug being under clinical trial for proving its effectiveness on AIDS treatment, and took it for several days only to find himself in a worse condition. While I was watching the film, I wondered why it took so much time for Woodroof to accept his diagnosis of AIDS despite his constant drug abuse via injection. I later found out that in 1980s, there was a lack of knowledge in cause and transmission of the disease. Therefore, during that time, there were many drug dependent people who administered drugs through intravenous injection in AIDS patient population. Furthermore, the film sheds light on the development of drug policies in US and moral dilemma in pharmaceutical industry.

His search for a new drug led Woodroof to Mexico and there he found ddC and peptide T, which were not approved by FDA and thus illegal to use in US. When the drugs turned out to work for his symptoms, he started Dallas Buyers Club to distribute these smuggled and FDA-unapproved drugs to other HIV-positive patients in US. When the club flourished, FDA and the state government interdicted and rejected Woodroof’s request to review various

studies and foreign medical journals that prove the safety of the drugs. This may indicate excessive protection of health authorities such as FDA can impede the development of pharmaceutical industry.
However, we learned in class that the first responsibility of FDA regulation on drug is to ensure drug safety through stringent clinical testing.

Furthermore, their regulatory measure can quickly eliminate ineffective drugs from the market. Also, it can promote price competition between pharmaceutical companies by providing information on benefits and side-effects of drugs to patients. Moreover, as we covered in class, complementary measure was introduced such as fast track designation which expedites development and review of drugs that address unmet medical need in the treatment of serious or life-threatening

conditions.
Another issue that I learned from the film is the possible conflict between ethics and profit-making of pharmaceutical business. For instance, many of the world’s big pharmaceutical companies once faced with universal condemnation for their case against the South African government planning to import cut-price copies of patented drugs to treat AIDS patients. According to UNAIDS, about 36.7 million people are living with HIV and about 70% of them are from third world countries. In other words, investment on drugs for rare disease such as AIDS is not an economically reasonable choice for pharmaceutical business because after all, they are business. In profit-driven society, should pharmaceutical business be criticized for being too commercial? I believe this is the point where effective governmental or international policies should intervene to restore the balance between public well-being and protection of private business. I believe this dilemma has resonated throughout the history of pharmaceutical industry and would persist in the future.
When I first watched the film, I simply enjoyed the film and thought I learned something about the drug industry in US. However, after learning about the role of FDA, clinical testing process and the history of drug policy in detail in class, I could more objectively assess the system of US pharmaceutical industry and raise questions pertinent to the issues in the film.