The eradication of malaria would offer us enhanced travel opportunities in tropical regions. It would greatly improve the economic performance in many (especially African) countries which, through trade, would have direct and indirect positive economic effects on ourselves. And it would gain us a great deal of good will for poor populations who are currently, quite understandably, suspecting our humanitarian concerns to be highly selective: We are willing to spend billions to protect disaffected Kosovars and Iraqis from the brutalities of Milosovic and Saddam Hussein, but ignore very much larger numbers of human beings who are exterminated by genocide (Rwanda) or starvation and could be saved at very much lower cost.
Thomas Pogge, ‘Testing Our Drugs on the Poor Abroad’, in Ezekiel Emanuel and Jennifer Hawkins (eds.), Exploitation and Multi-National Research, Princeton, 2008