Pharmaceutical companies, once blasted as uncaring or downright greedy for charging thousands of dollars for a year's worth of AIDS medicines like Viread in poor countries, lately have been slashing prices and licensing their drugs for free or nominal cost to nonprofits or local manufacturers in the developing world. Activists say the largesse is in part an attempt to avoid a repeat of the public-relations backlash the companies received a decade ago after initially pricing the drugs at levels only patients in the West could widely afford...The bottom line: By licensing AIDS drugs at little cost for use in the Third World, drugmakers get favorable press and don't bear distribution costs. [refers to Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer]