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A PHARMACEUTICAL WARNING: RICHARD J. ROBERTS
Tania Lucía Castro Díaz is an undergraduate student in the Spanish literature program at the Universidad de Guadalajara. In 2018-2019 she gave workshops in reading and creative writing for the Luvina Joven program. She has worked in the publishing sector since 2019 and currently works as a French teacher.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought us to a crisis, and not only to a health crisis, but to economic and emotional ones as well: we are surrounded by fear and uncertainty in the face of the unknown. Almost a year after the virus began to spread, the doctors who risk their lives for others and the researchers working on a possible vaccine represent the light we hope to see at the end of the tunnel. The pharmaceutical industry is committed to creating and distributing a safe
vaccine, in order to eliminate, once and for all, the death toll caused by COVID-19. Over the years, this industry has adapted to the changes in the world and has provided its services in the best possible way, modernizing itself and developing in order to offer high-quality products and medicines. This may suggest that those engaged in the medical and pharmaceutical sciences have a more vital sense of solidarity than the rest of us, that their prevailing motivations are humanitarian. It is ironic, however, that human beings sometimes lack humanity. The capitalist system can affect the interests of different sectors: where once there was a genuine concern for others, now there is competition for monetary profits. A situation that makes us wonder: what happens when economic interests outweigh those of human health? Richard J. Roberts insists that the pharmaceutical industry has succumbed to the desires and interests of those seeking economic profit rather than health. Richard John Roberts was born in Derby, England, in 1943. His parents, John and Edna Roberts, always encouraged him to follow what he was most passionate about: chemistry. He graduated
PROFILE
Health and illness: two opposing concepts that exist in parallel. These are the very concepts with which medicine works, the latter being studied so that the former prevails. In times like the present, when a deadly virus has slipped into our lives, the health sector is mobilized. People take care of themselves, they try to avoid exposing themselves, but none of this is of any use if a cure cannot be developed. This is where researchers in the field assume a central role. In order to find a cure, we must first understand the processes of the human body and the essence of the disease itself; then how it evolves within the body, which will lead us to understand how to prevent it and eventually how to cure it. Finding an effective treatment for the virus has become the holy grail.
