On comes the dragon-slayer - the man from Pfizer, visiting Thailand to defend the integrity of his brand and vital investment in tomorrow's cures, shielding the poor from shady market-traders peddling harmful counterfeit drugs that just stoke organised crime.
In the opposite corner, a local university researcher, up on her moral high horse, telling Pfizer to switch its wasteful marketing budget into lower prices, instead of just protecting their intellectual property and obscene profits. (This confirms the ignorance of academics, as though marketing is an unnecessary frill, and profit is something you can snap-off like the top of a pine-tree.)
But even as we speak, the game is fast going online, and attention is focusing on the Philippines as the world capital of call-centre outsourcing, able to employ the poor and humble in their millions - as also noticed with much interest by organised crime.
So where does this leave us? Even the WHO has declared counterfeiting to be a global health crisis, but the Anti-Cybercrime Group of the Philippine National Police seems to rate pharmaceutical trading as a curiously low priority. And meanwhile the average Joe Blow, unable to afford the real thing, consoles himself that he's probably being sold a generic (identical or similar to the original), while the trader is making more than he would peddling heroin.