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the thing about AIDS is the incentives aren't in curing it, but treating it. The drug companies aren't interested so much in eliminating disease as they are in suppressing it enough to extract maximum profits from their patients.
If companies are so interested in incentives, why isn't there an international AIDS X-Prize? A huge lump sum where each country contributes to the pot. Whoever CURES AIDS gets the lump sum paid in supplements to simulate profits, and everyone gets the licensing to make a generic drug to cure the afflicted. I think the reason is that the potential profits of an AIDS cure is beyond anything an X-Prize style lump sum can pay off. In the end it's all about money.
People are dying. It's a crisis and a tragedy, but to expect all other industries (including tourism) to somber up and ignore THEIR profits is naive. To spend only the absolute spartan necessities to hold the summit so all the money can go towards research removes the incentives of going to such a summit other than philanthropy, which is clearly (as illustrated by the article) not the reason most of these companies are in the race for the cure.
Also, throwing an endless amount of money on a problem isn't going to solve everything. The only thing it does is give researchers incentives to prolong their research rather than quickly come up with something that'll save lives.
I agree that removing the incentives of researching AIDS will prove counterproductive when the next epidemic rolls around and no one wants to foot the bill so the world can be saved... but this article was bitching about so much more than stealing licenses. The (supposed) intended message was lost in a sea of self righteousness.
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