It is not often that the little man wins against the corporation, especially when the "little man" is in a less developed part of the world and the corporations are among the most powerful in the West. It was all the nicer then to see the world's richest drug companies drop their opposition to a South African law on importing cheaper generic drugs to battle its mushrooming HIV/AIDS crisis.

Okay, the South African government is hardly your typical "little man" but it was certainly the underdog in its battle with the 39 pharmaceutical giants looking to defend their patent rights for anti-retroviral drugs that are too expensive to be afforded by the vast majority of the 25 million Africans thought to be suffering from the killer disease.

Lost in the growing clamour were companies' valid concerns over inadequate controls on the manufacture of cheaper products and the need for companies to recoup the massive costs of drug development. Accused of putting profits before lives and facing a PR disaster stretching far beyond South African shores, the companies capitulated . . . for now.