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  3. Of all the goods and services traded in the market economy, pharmaceuticals are perhaps the most contentious. Though produced by

Of all the goods and services traded in the market economy, pharmaceuticals are perhaps the most contentious. Though produced by

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问题     Of all the goods and services traded in the market economy, pharmaceuticals are perhaps the most contentious. Though produced by private companies, they constitute a public good, both because they can prevent epidemics and because healthy people function better as members of society than sick ones do. They carry a moral weight that most privately traded goods do not, for there is a widespread belief that people have a right to health care.
    Innovation accounts for most of the cost of production, so the price of drugs is much higher than their cost of manufacture, making them unaffordable to many poor people. Firms protect the intellectual property (IP) that drugs represent and sue those who try to manufacture and sell patented drugs cheaply. For all these reasons, pharmaceutical companies are widely regarded as vampires who exploit the sick and ignore the sufferings of the poor.
    These criticisms reached a summit more than a decade ago at the peak of the HIV plague. When South Africa’s government sought to legalise the import of cheap generic copies of patented AIDS drugs, pharmaceutical companies took it to court. The case earned the nickname "Big Pharma v Nelson Mandela". It was a low point for the industry, which wisely backed down.
    Now arguments over drugs pricing are rising again. Activists are suing to block the patenting in India of a new Hepatitis C drug that has just been approved by American regulators. Other clashes are breaking out, in countries from Brazil to Britain. But the main battlefield is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed trade deal between countries in Asia and the Americas. The parties have yet to reach an agreement, partly because of the drug-pricing question.
    Under the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, a deal signed in 1994, governments can allow a generic drugmaker to produce a patented medicine. America—home of most of the world’s big pharma, whose consumers pay the world’s highest prices for drugs—wants to use the TPP to restrict such compulsory licences to infectious diseases, while emerging-market countries want to make it harder for drug firms to win patents.
    The reoccurrence of conflict over drug pricing is the result not of a sudden emergency, but of broad, long-term changes. Rich countries want to slash health costs. In emerging markets, people are living longer and getting rich-country diseases. This is boosting demand for drugs for cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases. In emerging markets, governments want to expand access to treatment, but drugs already account for a large share of health-care spending. Meanwhile, a wave of innovation is producing expensive new treatments.
The example of HIV plague is to ______.
选项 A、illustrate how drug firms protect the price of the drug
B、demonstrate AIDS is an extremely hazardous disease
C、prove that government has nothing to do to cut down the price of the drug
D、show how the nickname "Big Pharma v Nelson Mandela" was earned
答案A
解析 根据题干中的“HIV plague”定位到第三段首句。该题问文章提到HIV plague的目的，几个选项中明显不符合题意的是B和D两项，其中B项表述的只是一个客观认知，文章并未提及；而D项虽然提到了，但只是文章提到的一处细节，并非提及HIV plague的目的，故这两项可以先排除。该段第二句提到：When South Africa’s government sought to legalise the import of cheap generic copies of patented AIDS drugs，pharmaceutical companies took it to court. 该句大意是：南非政府试图使进口专利艾滋病药物的廉价仿制药合法化，而制药公司却诉诸法律。可见制药公司希望通过法律途径保护其药价，故该题答案为选项A。
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