President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran and Turkey are capable of developing medical methods in order to overcome Israeli monopoly of the global pharmaceutical industry.Israel's largest pharmaceutical company, Teva, was ranked 18th in revenues of all pharmaceuticals in 2008. It is the only Israeli company listed in the top 49. Its revenues represent about 1.7% of the total of all of the top 49.
Speaking in a meeting with Turkish Health Minister Rajab Akdagh on Saturday, President Ahmadinejad referred to the significant progress made by Turkey and Iran in the field of health and medical treatment, said: "Iran and Turkey should brush aside the Israeli monopoly on major pharmaceutical companies and work together to present the world with new health and medical treatment methods."
Pointing to the plight of nations in different parts of the world and in particular in the less developed countries and the Islamic states, President Ahmadinejad said it was a humanitarian duty to administer health and medical treatment justice across the globe.
For his part, the Turkish health minister, praised Iran's progress in the field of health and medical treatment.
"Turkey seeks to increase the level of cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran and will start the exchange of medical experiences with this country," Akdag said.
"Health and medical treatment is one of the most important issues in life, but unfortunately it has somehow been neglected even by certain developed countries. Today, more than 50 million people in the United States are currently without insurance," the Turkish official explained.
Not exactly a monopoly.
However, if you interpret Ahmadinejad's words as meaning "Jewish/Zionist" rather than Israeli, and you consider the West to be "Jewish/Zionist," then that share of pharm revenues goes up to 90%. (The only non-Western nations of the top companies are from China and Japan.)
The West needs to realize that when Iran talks about Zionism and Israel, it really means the entire Western world of which Israel is merely representative. Remember, a year before the famous "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran, Iran hosted a much-less noticed "World Without America" conference.
Iran recognizes the strong anti-Israel current among the fashionably idiotic leftists in the West and has been toning down its anti-Western rhetoric in order to widen the schism within the West concerning Israel. One only has to read Iran's statements a little more critically, as in this case about the pharmaceuticals, to be able to see through the charade.
Too bad that so many Westerners don't have the ability to look beyond their own noses.