And yet, even Dr Hamied's friends say it wasn't simply compassion that drove the generic-drug pioneer to make his attention-grabbing offer last month to sell AIDS drugs at deep discounts, a move that has set-off an extraordinary price war for supplying the life-saving medicines to Africa and developing nations elsewhere. The developing world is home to the vast majority of the globe's 35 million people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

One friend, Bombay patent lawyer Narendra Zaveri, says Dr Hamied's offer was "very much a business deal" designed to build Cipla's brand name outside India. Others say Dr Hamied wanted to impress Indian government officials with his ability to cut prices, as part of an effort to preserve the legal rights of India's generic-drug companies to make and market copies of newly developed drugs.

Regardless, Cipla's offer to sell a triple-combination of "antiretroviral" AIDS drugs to the international aid group `Doctors Without Borders' at less than $1 a day per patient is transforming the debate over how to provide critical medicines to poor nations.

For the first time, companies like Cipla that copy drugs still under patent in other countries, are being taken seriously by the United Nations. That is making them important players, in a new plan UN officials are drafting for supplying much-needed medicines to Africa.

Multinational pharmaceutical companies dismiss Cipla and its peers as patent "pirates." But the big multinationals are nonetheless responding with discounts for developing nations, that the drug giants themselves would have labeled impossible just a few months ago. And other Indian generic-drug makers are fueling the pricing battle as they try to outdo Cipla.

Health-care advocates in the US are paying attention, too. Cipla's price, $350 a year per patient for one three-drug cocktail known to extend the lives of AIDS patients, is 1/30 of the treatment's cost in the US. Mr Paul Davis of AIDS activist organization `Act Up/Philadephia' says his group has decided to lobby against big drug companies' patent extensions in the US, in order to pressure them to sell drugs cheaply in Africa.

An Unwitting 'Crusade'
"Whatever you may say, what we have started has been a crusade," says the mercurial 64-year-old Dr Hamied. "It has unwittingly developed into this."Cipla, whose name was largely unknown in the West until recently, is keeping up the pressure, too. Later this month, Dr Hamied is scheduled to meet with officials of the UN's World Health Organization to talk about ways to administer international sales of generic AIDS drugs. Just last week, the company filed a request in South Africa for a license to sell cheap versions of patented AIDS drugs there. That request may bolster the South African government's defense of a controversial law, that allows it to authorize imports of low-cost generics, even as 39 major drug-makers attack the law in a South African court.

How much the crusade will help AIDS patients is still unclear. Cipla's offer to Paris-based Doctors Without Borders so far seems largely symbolic, since the group lacks the resources, infrastructure or desire to be a global drug distributor. Doctors Without Borders is unsure whether it will be able to get the funding to buy Cipla's drugs. If it does, the group says it plans to set-up only small pilot projects to dispense them.

Campaigns to get cheap drugs into African nations also face legal and logistical hurdles, as well as questions about who will verify that the knockoffs work like the originals. Dr Hamied hasn't extended the $350-a-year offer to governments, which might buy large volumes of drugs, but he says he is willing to sell them the three-drug regimen for $600 a patient per year. That price appears to be comfortably profitable for the Indian drug maker, whose overall AIDS-drug sales have been paltry thus far.

Last May, five large drug companies pledged to provide their AIDS drugs to people in sub-Sahara Africa at about 80% off the prices they charge in the US and Europe. But because prices were still far above most Africans' reach, that effort received a limited response. Last week, in an effort to encourage African nations and international donors to begin buying or subsidizing the drugs, but also partly in response to Cipla and its Indian rivals, Merck & Co. slashed its prices by an additional 50%. New price cuts from other big companies are expected to follow.

But, as with the large drug companies' offers, many wonder if Cipla's proposals will have impact beyond their publicity value. "That's the question we all have," says Mr Denis Broun, a former UN pharmaceuticals specialist who has advised Dr Hamied over the past year. Saving lives with the AIDS drugs, requires specially trained doctors and nurses and careful tracking of patient dosages, says Dr Broun, who now works for Management Sciences for Health, a nonprofit consulting group based in Boston. Dr Hamied, he believes, is mostly concerned with influencing patent laws in India.

"He is pretty cleverly using the AIDS issue to push his views, and show their validity," says Dr Broun. "He is pursuing, internationally, an Indian objective."

Dr Hamied says that his sole motive for offering to supply cheap AIDS drugs is simply "my social obligation to society."