Logo for the Mapping Project

The Mapping Project

Novartis

Novartis is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Novartis uses its power and legal muscle to enforce neoliberal intellectual property/patent regimes, maximizing its profits by denying peoples in Global South nations affordable access to life-saving and life-improving medicines. Novartis also contributes to the displacement of working class residents from Cambridge, MA.

Upholding medical apartheid and racial capitalism

Novartis fights to preserve the power of Western pharmaceutical multinationals to maintain high prices that maximize corporate profits, while undertaking legal fights against attempts by Global South nations to produce medications generically in order to make them accessible to their peoples (a process some analysts have termed "medical apartheid"). As one example, in 2013 Novartis undertook a 7-year long legal challenge of India's patent laws, fighting in the nation's court system to maintain the price of a one months supply of a the life-saving cancer drug Gleevec at INR 150,000 (~USD $2,200 ), a price far out of reach for most people in a country with a per capita income of INR 126,000 (~USD $1,688.05).

Contributions to displacement ("gentrification")

Novartis leases multiple buildings from MIT in Cambridge MA. By gobbling up Cambridge real estate and moving its generally wealthier workforce into the city, Novartis (along with other university, biomedical, and tech giants) contributes to the ongoing rise of housing, rental, and general living costs in Cambridge and the Boston area broadly (see figure below), which is leaving long-time working class residents increasingly unable to afford remain in the communities they have called home for years if not decades.

(Image source: here)

Back to main page.