Look....a GOOD thing...a not-for-profit pharmacuetical company that

[Gloria]

serves those in need...

http://www.oneworldhealth.org/

[killbotfactory]

1. Non-profit? Are they insane?!?!

Sick people are a captive market, you can make a mint off of selling them drugs! What are they going to do, refuse to take them?! Bwahahahahah! arghh arhhh AAAHHHH

woah... i just channelled ayn rand for a second... i'm better now.

[oscar111]

2. Summary, pls, of how they get licences for drugs?

or will they research new drugs on their own?

How will they do things? their site may have had it, but i did not see it in a fast look.

anyone able to post a summary here of how they will function?

for us with little time to read, no time to become deep experts on all issues. sadly, many LW types insist on me reading links to long articles and get miffed if i do not.

[oscar111]

3. rip off the desperate: dr's, lawyers, pawn shops, payday loans, sell us ur

furniture and then rent it from us guys... all ways to make fortunes from the desperate.

"the professions" ... hmmmmmmm.

[Starlight]

4. There was an article in the Jan 24 issue of The Nation...

regarding entrepreneurial nonprofits that I found fascinating:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050124&s=shuman

Profits for Justice
by Michael H. Shuman & Merrian Fuller

Now that the religious right dominates all three branches of the federal government, one of the few avenues still open for creative progressive initiative is business. To get an inkling of what's possible, drop by the Used Book Cafe in the SoHo district of New York City. There you'll find an independent bookstore that lacks the selection of a Borders but enjoys regular visits from leading agents and publishers in the city and boasts a fabulous events calendar that reads like a Who's Who of contemporary writers and musicians. What's truly revolutionary about the cafe, however, is that last year the business, along with sister thrift shops, provided more than $2 million to its parent nonprofit, Housing Works, one of the nation's largest advocacy groups for homeless people with HIV/AIDS. Housing Works runs clinics, conducts public-policy research, lobbies federal and state officials, even leads sit-ins. It is fearless, aggressive and stunningly effective--and its $30 million of annual work would be impossible were it not for a vast range of realty, food service, retail and rental companies that help pay the bills.

"What we are about," says Housing Works president and CEO Charles King, "is the business of changing the entire paradigm by which not-for-profits operate and generate the capital they need to carry out their mission--a new paradigm based on sustainability and social entrepreneurship." King is helping other nonprofits adopt these ideas through the Social Enterprise Alliance, which recently held its fifth annual conference, involving 600 social entrepreneurs from thirty-nine states and seven countries.

This new paradigm increasingly defines our own jobs. One of us, after raising some $15 million for various progressive nonprofits, decided six years ago to start creating socially responsible enterprises, including community-friendly poultry production, small-business venture capital and buy-local purchasing clubs. The other has run a network of progressive independent businesses in Philadelphia, an effort based at the White Dog Cafe, one of the city's top restaurants, which serves food from local farmers.

We believe that the spread of social entrepreneurship, and the positive alternative to conventional fundraising it provides for raising resources, offers a fundamentally new and powerful strategy for progressives to expand their power and their voice in the United States.

I'd also like to see this, or another, nonprofit pharmaceutical company producing ordinary generic & OTC medications with the profits going back into their social programs. Wouldn't you prefer to buy your aspirin from a socially responsible, charitable company rather than a huge right wing for profit corporation? I know I would! The same with my clothes, groceries, furniture.... :)