 Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. Three things. One, I have an essay in the Washington Post about tuberculosis. Two, there's a new crash course lecture about the history of tuberculosis. And three, Danerher. Two-sentence backstory. The company Cepheid, owned by the larger conglomerate Danerher, makes these amazing gene expert tests, which are the best available tests for tuberculosis. But similar cartridges can also test for HIV or hepatitis or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. Recently, our community helped pressure Danerher to lower the price of their standard tuberculosis test cartridge, which resulted in literally millions more people per year being able to access high-quality testing. But the tests for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis, et cetera, all remain far too expensive. So several organizations have come together to ask for a drop in test pricing for low- and middle-income countries, and you can sign their petition at the link in the doobly-doo. Now, I know it often feels like signing petitions is just a shout into the void. But I would argue that in this case it isn't because, one, Danerher has shown a willingness to respond to polite but insistent pressure. And, two, this kind of thing appears to be the only way to bring change in the system as currently understood by Danerher. Because right now, there's exactly one group of people who benefit from Danerher charging an over 300% markup in the world's poorest countries for, say, an HIV test. Poor communities certainly don't benefit, right like as Partners in Health puts it, in every country where they work, if the cost per cartridge were lowered, we could expand access significantly. People with HIV don't benefit, as it's harder than it needs to be to access quality testing. The social order doesn't benefit, as the human community wants HIV to be diagnosed quickly and accurately. And I would argue that most Danerher employees don't benefit either. Like, most people who work at Cepheid did not get into their lab or tech work because they wanted to make piles of money, but instead because they wanted to make these amazing tests that can absolutely transform healthcare globally. They want their tech and research to be creating the maximal possible societal benefit. And there's plenty of money to be made in rich countries in order to fund that research and their livelihoods. The only person who benefits from Danerher's price gouging is for lack of a better term, me. Because Danerher is a publicly traded company, and I am a shareholder. Now, in the current system, Danerher has a responsibility to us shareholders. It is legally obligated to do what is in our best interest because we own the company. And at least as far as I understand Danerher's position, they don't feel they can make decisions that would harm the shareholders even when that would benefit the entirety of humanity. So I bought a tiny slice of Danerher recently, partly to say thanks for lowering the price of that standard TB cartridge, but mostly because it allows me to attend certain meetings and talk with other shareholders about how they're profiting off of price gouging the world's poorest people and those who serve them. I just think it's important for my fellow shareholders to understand this because they're literally the only people who benefit from this profiteering. Like each of us makes about a dollar per share in profit dividends every year, which amounts to only like $10 for me, but for Danerher's co-founders, Steven and Mitchell Rails, they each make over $25 million a year just in dividends. Now, not all of that comes from overcharging the poor for HIV and tuberculosis tests. In fact, very little of it does. Danerher makes over $4 billion a year in profit. Less than 1% of that comes from Cepheid overcharging for test prices in low and middle income countries, which is actually why I think they can be convinced to change. Because when I hear that a company's primary obligation is not to its employees or its customers or the social order, but instead to its shareholders, what I hear is that the only way to get Danerher to do the right thing is to cost them more in reputational harm than they make from overcharging the poor. And petitions can help do that along with other forms of polite but impassioned pressure. Five or 10,000 people having a negative opinion of your company and caring enough to sign a petition makes it harder to recruit and more expensive to market and so on. It's a real problem, as is negative publicity, and there's currently quite a bit of that for Danerher, not only in the Washington Post, but also online, on threads, and Instagram, and Facebook, and Twitter, or whatever Twitter is now called. There's even a lower your test prices version of Flappy Bird, which I, for one, find utterly addictive. Combine that with the Danerher employees who have been heroically speaking up and letting their voices be heard, and it starts to get pretty expensive not to lower your test prices. Expensive enough, one would hope, that Danerher will consider lowering test prices not just for the standard tuberculosis test, but for all of their tests in low and middle income countries. And if we haven't made it expensive enough, rest assured that we will continue until we do. So please sign the petition linked in the video info below and continue to ask Danerher to lower their prices. This shareholder, for one, would appreciate it. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.