Dallas Buyers Club is a movie about a man named Ron Woodroof who finds out he has contracted HIV. He is told he has only 30 days to live. Ron does not want to accept the fact that he has contracted HIV since during the time period HIV was wrongly correlated with being a homosexual. This sent Ron into a spiral where he experimented with drugs and made horrible decisions that made him sick. After becoming more ill he decided to get treatment for his condition, however, the treatment was only making his other illnesses worse. Ron took to the streets again after doing some research and found therapy with Docters in Mexico and other parts of the world Ron took it upon himself to self-administer drugs. These therapies were treating his symptoms and keeping him alive.
Ron saw a problem in his life and found a viable solution that was not yet regulated in America. This is where Rons aspect of entrepreneurship took place. The aspect being finding a problem that society faces and providing a solution society values. Ron saw that the new drug AZT was causing more harm than good to the patients in the trial, as well as, not having patients that desperately needed the therapy to be allowed into the trials, including him. He saw this opportunity to start the Dallas Buyers Club. A subscription-based service that gifted individuals the therapy that he was smuggling into the United States. The reason I found this interesting was since Ron found a way to capitalize on a medicine not yet regulated by the United States through a loophole in the FDA’s regulations. Since he was not charging/selling the therapy to his patients in a legal sense they could not shut his company down. He was able to help people live longer at a time when they had little hope.
This aspect of entrepreneurship affects society in a couple of ways. First being by directly helping the customers with the therapy and keeping their symptoms to a minimum. Another way this aspect affects society is through the creation of regulations. Later, in the movie the FDA steps in and starts to regulate this style of therapy to help promote the use of AZT by banning the substances. What this does for society is takes a useful therapy that is shown to work and banned it allowing a therapy that is more profitable but less effective to replace it. Society supports this aspect of entrepreneurship, and it is shown through the court case that Ron is put through where the judge confronts the FDA saying that they already have a statement saying the therapy method is safe for human consumption but has still banned it. They also support it since it is more effective than the other form of therapy, AZT. The interaction between this aspect of entrepreneurship is a positive one. This is because it provides greater value than its competitor AZT. It is also positive since working in a market that is unregulated allows for new inventions and innovations to take place providing greater value for society.