Billions of people lack the freedom to access affordable life-saving medicines. One third of Americans leave prescriptions unfilled due to costs, often skipping doses or cutting pills in half just to get by.
In PHARMA MONOPOLY, Tahir Amin and co-author Rohit Malpani pull back the curtain on a system that prioritizes power and profit over human well-being. This isn't just about the pharmaceutical industry—it’s about how access to medical care has been remade by private interests both in the U.S. and abroad, how governments have ceded control to monopolies, and how global health initiatives often maintain a status quo that leaves the most vulnerable behind while cementing existing power structures.
Through a critical look at historical events, including drawing on Tahir’s two decades in the global access to medicines movement from Delhi to Geneva to Capitol Hill, PHARMA MONOPOLY traces how the ideology of neoliberalism pushed by western governments under the guise of a ‘rules based order’ operated as a form of colonialism that shaped global trade and the modern pharmaceutical industry over the last 50 years.
PHARMA MONOPOLY challenges the dominant narratives of intellectual property, the false god of innovation, and philanthropy that have created or reinforced inequities and injustices. It also provides a warning of a neo-feudalism that is to come with the emergence of AI in the field of medicines and offers a powerful call for a new movement for justice in global health.
Join us at The People’s Forum on June 11th for an evening with Tahir Amin, in conversation with South African activist-scholar-author, A. Kayum Ahmed.