A patient in South Africa will pay $15.87 a day for a particular medication produced by Pfizer, a price that represents twice the person's average daily income. But residents in Thailand will pay less than a dollar for the same dose because Pfizer holds no patent protection there.

Orbinski called this disparity, as well as the general preventive cost of medication, "a moral failure, a political failure and a market failure."

He called for change in the current economic system's structure and a need to recognize the dignity of the individual.

"Remember, the other has a fundamental and irreducible human dignity," Orbinski said. "That is the beginning and it must also be the end."

His speech ended a two-day conference sponsored by the Hippocratic Societies at Harvard and MIT.

The conference also featured an opening keynote speech by Dr. David Ho, scientific director and chief executive officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and TIME Magazine's Man of the Year in 1996, as well as panels and breakout sessions with other experts in the field of international health.

"It went exceptionally well; everything went very smoothly," said Co-director Joanna L. Chan '02.