As Merck and Johnson & Johnson discovered, exemplary actions within the competitive pharmaceutical industry can be very costly Of course, not all companies are as willing to take such actions. In 2000 it was estimated that more than 25 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with the AIDS virus, a number that represents an increase of almost 4 million people over 1999. More than 2.5 million died of AIDS in the year 2000. It is estimated that over 16 million have already died of AIDS since this contemporary plague began in the early 1980s. Thirty-five percent of Botswana's population is report¬edly infected with AIDS.