This week, let us consider the nature of evil, the human face Satan wears as he walks among us. No horns or tail, no goatee or widow’s peak, no pitchfork or scarlet jacket. No, I think Satan is serious and sober, righteous and mediocre. A churchgoer, a deep thinker, a man of best intentions.

Satan does not occur in a vacuum, he needs a context, so we’ll give him one. A few months ago, I spoke of the AIDS crisis continuing to explode throughout the developing world. David Satcher, the U.S. surgeon general, compared AIDS in Africa to the Black Plague that ravaged medieval Europe. In the U.S., the AIDS crisis is said to be under control, because many Americans with AIDS – or their insurance companies – can afford the costly chemical cocktails used to fight AIDS. Africans don’t have that kind of money. The pharmaceutical companies will sell AIDS drugs to Africa, but at $12,000 per patient, per year, few can afford it.

The drug makers could actually make more money if they dropped their prices in Africa and increased their volume, but they won’t do it, because they fear selling that volume of drugs at those prices will bring Americans in and hurt profits back home. So, for the sake of profit, the drug makers are willing to let a continent waste away and die. Do you begin to hear the Satanic footstep in the hallway?

The government of South Africa, delivered from the advocates of apartheid just in time to meet this crisis, is fighting back, in two ways.

Way Number One – South Africa is invoking a practice known as compulsory licensing, which means that a pharmaceutical company wishing to sell drugs in South Africa must also license the patent for that drug to a competitor. The resulting competition will bring down prices. Other countries which have invoked compulsory licensing have reduced drug prices by up to 75 percent.

Way Number Two – Parallel imports – South African officials go to a country where AIDS drugs are sold for reduced prices – like France – buy up large stocks, and bring them back to South Africa for resale.

Both of the methods I’ve described are approved by the World Trade Organization, a group that is by no means a charity. And yet, those same actions – only in the specific case of South Africa and AIDS medication – are opposed by the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Commerce Department, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the U.S. Trade Representative and the National Security Council. All this opposition is being coordinated by one man, the chairman of the U.S./South Africa Binational Committee. The door opens and in walks Satan, wearing the face and suit of Albert Gore Junior, vice president of the United States.

The African continent faces a public health crisis of calamitous proportion and deep-thinking, church-going, well-intentioned Al Gore is doing everything he can to withhold desperately-needed medicine from the terminally ill. Why? Because that is what the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association has asked him to do, and Al Gore believes he needs their support.

Albert Gore Junior was conceived, born and raised with one purpose in mind: to become president of the United States of America. To fulfill his purpose, I have no doubt that Al Gore will sign deals with any number of devils. To achieve his end, he will justify any means, telling himself that once he is president, he’ll be able to reverse any damage he has done along the way. But if he is elected, Al Gore will immediately worry about re-election, and those devils will reappear, pens and contracts in hand.

And again, he will sign.