The Philippines: Why I quit the drugs industry
Global Women's Strike Journal, January 2006

As a kid I dreamt of becoming a doctor so that one day I could help people in my village who did not have the money to pay for even basic health services. I never became a doctor; my family could not afford it. Instead I worked for the pharmaceutical industry. My job was to peddle the myth that good health can be bought in the form of pills. I was good at it and money came quick and easy. When a friend asked me to help with health work with grassroots people, it hit me that the lies I helped peddle had mothers scrimping on their family’s food to buy medicines they did not need.

Without food – the very thing they did need for their health — many died so that I could have an easy life and drug companies could make huge profits. After four years, I quit my job.

My experience taught me that refusing to kill is not only a call to people directly involved in the military machine; it is a call for all of us to consider whether we are complicit in people’s death and disability; whether we work for caring or for killing.

I am now actively involved in the campaign to put an end to the business of killing lives in the greed for money and power. Like the doctor I never was I have vowed to use my skills to make people better. The killing business thrives on lies. It is my business now to help tell the truth.