Kylie Graham
EEE-2083
Per Bylund
10/25
Dallas Buyers Club is a movie based in the 80’s and the main character (Ron) gets diagnosed with HIV which causes him to build a semi-legal entrepreneurial empire. Ron was a cowboy that hung out at rodeos and slept with pretty much any woman he could find which leads to him getting a life long std. Ron soon learned that there were no legal FDA approved treatments for his disease in the United States but after further research he found that many other countries do have drugs that have shown to help people. He tried to be apart of studies in America to have some sort of access to this drug; he wasn’t able to be a part of any study or get any kind of treatment to help his diagnosis so he took a different route. Ron started getting vitamins and other pills from Mexico and other countries to bring into the United States. Ron originally was doing this for his own health and then realized how many people with HIV and AIDS have no access to treatment. Ron then started an organization called the Dallas buyers club to profit off of these people and “legally” provide them with treatment. These people paid for a $400 monthly “subscription” and they would receive medicine but they are technically only paying for a subscription so he was legally able to get away with basically selling drugs that are only supposed to be for personal use.
This movie created a new dynamic about entrepreneurship that I hadn’t really thought about. I didn’t realize how many loopholes there are in the business world and the things that people can get away with legally if they just take a different way around it. I think it’s very interesting yet confusing that you can sell a membership but the things you include within the membership are technically free making loopholes for many different things to be given to people but there is still a profit behind the things being provided. One event caused this man to create an entire movement that helped mainly the gay community and not only helped but saved many lives or at least made their lives last longer than they would have without him. The movie started with a grumpy homophobic cowboy and that one event kind of caused him to become a better person. If ron never got HIV so many people would have died a lot sooner than they needed to so it was very interesting and inspiring.
Ron getting HIV/AIDS caused him to seek his own treatment to save his life which ended up causing him to save many other peoples’ lives. If Ron never got the idea of making a profit from treating other people while saving himself many people would have never gotten treatment, leaving them to die. Ron’s entrepreneurial idea helped so many people prolong their lives and without his help so many of them wouldn’t have lasted. Ron affected an entire population of people with HIV/AIDS in such a helpful way. Without the boom of HIV cases ron would have never had the correct market of people to purchase his subscription making the community of people with HIV the only reason for his success with money. The relationship between Ron and the HIV positive community was kind of demeaning considering Ron was so homophobic but he was saving their lives. He also took advantage of people desperately needing medical care and charged them so much but that’s how business goes and he was their only choice of survival.