NO SHAME, NO BLAME. JUST DITCH THE BAGGAGE

On the Great West Road in Brentford is the glitzy new corporate headquarters of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Having started in a London apothecary shop in the year 1715, GSK has been through various mergers and is now Britain’s second largest company and also the second biggest drugs manufacturer in the world.
It employs 120,000 people worldwide and in the three months from July to September last year alone reported sales of over £5 billion and a pre-tax profit of almost £1.4 billion.
GSK produces many famous products ranging from homely ones like Ribena, Lucozade and Sensodyne toothpaste, to antibiotics, asthma, cancer and ulcer drugs and specialised anti-HIV medications such as abacavir (Ziagen), Combivir and Trizivir.
High up in the glass-fronted tower is a small team within GSK’s corporate structure - Positive Action -

and acting as its director is an openly gay ex-GP from Shropshire who also happens to be living with HIV himself.

Philanthropy seems to co-exist quite happily side by side with the profit motive within GSK, explains Richard South: “Positive Action has been going for 10 years and is an umbrella term for all our HIV