This pharmacy at the Evangel Hospital in Jos, Nigeria could be one of the beneficiaries of cheaper drugs and better facilities from GSK. Photo: MikeBlyth (flickr)

Pharmaceutical companies are often seen as villains for making life-saving drugs so expensive the poor can't afford them. But what if a new CEO was making drugs more affordable and sharing secrets that would lower profits but result in more cures?

Andrew Witty is the new chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) — the second largest drug company in the world. Witty recently outlined his plan to radically shift GSK policy to make four major changes that will help the developing world:

1. Slash drug prices to 25 percent (or lower) of their current U.S. and UK levels in the world's 50 poorest nations, and make drugs more affordable in middle-income countries like Brazil.

2. Reinvest 20 percent of drug profits made in developing countries to support health clinics and pay medical workers in those same countries.

3. Place their research on neglected diseases (with the exception of HIV) into a patent pool to share with other scientists to dramatically speed up medical breakthroughs.

4. Invite researchers from other governments, companies, and NGOs to participate in their research on tropical diseases at their institute at Tres Cantos in Spain.

So why would GSK do this? Witty told the Guardian he was so tired of hearing speeches about how terrible it is that there has been no progress in tuberculosis research or treatments for other diseases that he decided to do something about it.

We work like crazy to come up with the next great medicine, knowing that it's likely to get used an awful lot in developed countries, but we could do something for developing countries. Are we working as hard on that? I want to be able to say yes we are, and that's what this is all about – trying to make sure we are even-handed in terms of our efforts to find solutions not just for developed but for developing countries.

Lowering drug prices will help — but without adequate health care infrastructure, even cheaper drugs might not be accessible. That's what makes reinvesting profits to support clinics and pay medical workers' salaries so important, because it will increase access to these drugs.

But the most important change Witty has proposed is sharing GSK's research. By placing their research into patent pools, GSK will dramatically increase the speed of early-stage R&D activities and the likelihood of finding cures to neglected diseases.

"This is a gutsy move in a commercial world" said Mike French, World Vision's director of advocacy. "Witty has demonstrated a willingness to make saving lives a business goal along with making money."

An Economist article from late January looks at the popularly supported concept of corporate responsibility and what that means for corporate profits.

If companies need to be vigilant about the limits of CSR, the same applies even more to society as a whole. A dangerous myth is gaining ground: that unadorned capitalism fails to serve the public interest. Profits are not good, goes the logic of much CSR; hence the attraction of turning companies into instruments of social policy. In fact, the opposite is true. The main contribution of companies to society comes precisely from those profits (and the products, services, salaries and ideas that competitive capitalism creates). If the business of business stops being business, we all lose.

Today Business Week takes a look at Toyota and corporate responsibility:

Harish, who comes from a family that lives below the poverty line of $177 in annual income, was a good student but had no particular ambition. Then, last April, his schoolteacher alerted him to an advertisement by Toyota in the local paper. The automaker was inviting applications from 17-year-old, poor and needy students for factory training. It was offering free board, lodging, and education, plus a monthly stipend of $38. There were 5,000 applicants, and Harish was one of 64 boys from the southern state of Karnataka who made it to Toyota Tech, the training institute that opened last August as Toyota's first outside of Japan.

He now wants to be an automotive engineer. "I am so happy and can't believe," says Harish in his broken English about how his life and dreams have changed. They sure have. His mother and grandmother earn 65¢ daily as farm laborers, a brother is a bus cleaner, and a sister is training to be a nurse. But Harish is determined to change his life thanks to Toyota. In the three months he has been at the institute, he has saved $8 to give to his mother. "I want to make her proud," he says, outlining his determination to excel in his three-year course and bag the $180 and $230 fellowships for assiduous students.