The movie Dallas Buyers Club was about a Texan bull rider, Ron Woodroof, that was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and was given thirty days to live. After discovering that other patients including himself were being poisoned by the drugs given to help their HIV, Ron goes to Mexico where it is found that peptide T is much more beneficial, but it is not approved by the FDA. With this Ron decides to smuggle these drugs back to the U.S to sell them to other HIV carriers. The reason that this is entrepreneurial is because Ron innovated the way doctors would treat patients as well as finding an alternative that would benefit society. This is also entrepreneurial because since peptide T is not approved by the federal drug administration, Ron had to travel not only to Mexico, but to Japan, as well as Europe to help find his source of product for his consumers. This is developing business allies to make sure he keeps a constant supply of these medications. How this can also be an entrepreneurial tactic is how the prices of Ron’s peptide T is significantly lower than the hospitals prices for AZT. This keeps Ron’s competitive advantage high bringing in more patients getting treated at the buyer’s club rather than the hospital. One of the most important entrepreneurial moves Ron made was finding his business partner, Rayon, who knows lots of Ron’s target audience suffering from HIV which is where all of his profits came from. This entire movie interested me because it shows that big industries like hospitals seem scared of innovation. Since the hospital was already working on a cure of their own, having an entrepreneur like Ron come in with proof that he has a drug that is proven to work already can get hospitals and the federal drug administration ready to put up an entry barrier to prevent from any further competition to arise. This aspect of entrepreneurship affects society by showing consumers with HIV they are part of an experimental trial at hospitals. This decreased the demand for the hospitals drug but increased the demand for peptide T. This aspect of entrepreneurship also affected society because it led to AZT being proved to be ineffective which made for doctors to send HIV patients over to the buyer’s club instead for medication thus increasing demand even more. Society supported this aspect of entrepreneurship by test patients not showing up to the medication test and going to seek Ron for help instead. This shows how much competitive edge the buyers' club had over hospitals at a time where many people are dying and being impacted by a disease. The interaction between this aspect of entrepreneurship and society is that during this time many people were dying from this disease so patients would come to Ron as a safety measure for their own health. The research to prove his claim about the medications helping with HIV is the reason this interaction with society is strong and trusting. With being more reliable, cheaper, and efficient, it brings in a more competitive edge and bring in more clientele which brings more money in an entrepreneur’s pocket.
