AIDS Profiteers Declare War
Encouraging news about the clinical benefit of protease inhibitors
means nothing if people do not have access to these drugs. By
pricing drugs as high as the market will bear without opening
their books to give even the slghtest justification to the cost,
drug companies have declared war on people with HIV throughout
the world. Their profiteering ensures that these drugs will at
best bankrupt government health care programs and at worst be
deined to millions of people worldwide.
- Hoffman-LaRoche
- declared war by setting the then highest-price for an anti-HIV
drug, even though saquanivir is under-dosed and under-absorbed
in its current form.
- Abbott
- declared war by demanding an even higher price for ritonavir
and by limiting access before approval to a 1,000 lottery, claiming
severely limited drug supply. Two months later,a fter FDA approval,
enough drug to stock every pharmacy int he U.S. miraculously
appeared! Such deceit is intolerable.
- Merck
- declared was by dispensing indinavir through a single pharmacy
that added such an extreme markup tot he drug's price that activist
had to go to jail to get the price lowered! While the current
price is lower than other protease inhibitors, it is still unacceptable
without justification.
These companies have simply continued a long tradition of
price-gouging begun by Glaxo-Wellcome (then Burroughs-Wellcome)
and others:
- Pfizer
- declared war by refusing for years to offer any discounts
to publicly funded health programs in the U.S. Pfizer drained
millions of precious dollars from these programs, and then refuses
to conduct any AIDS-related research.
- Astra
- declared war by demanding the highest price for any AIDS-related
drug in hisotry - $35,000 a year for foscarnet, a CMV treament
- even thought he vast majority of the research as publicly funded.
Repeated calls for a price reduction have been ignored.
- Serono
- declared war by demanding $1,000 a week for human growth
hormone before it received FDA approval for AIDS wasting. While
ACT UP pressure has forced Serono to agree to an annual price
cap, Serono still refuse to justify its price.
- BTG
- declared war nu increasing the price of oxandrolone - a 30
year old anti-wasting treatment - over 1,200% after its usefulness
in AIDS was shown.
These are just a few examples of why we must begin a relentless
campaign against these price gougers to demand that they:
Drop Their Prices or Open Their Books
Drug prices must be economically appropriate to each country.
To demand obscene profit margins off the backs of people with
AIDS, or to make access for people in developing countries unimaginable,
is criminal. If the drug companies are so sure that their prices
are ethical, why have they consistently refused to alow any independent
auditor to look at their actual costs.
If they have nothing to hide, why are they hiding?
Declare War on AIDS Profiteers.
Whose Side are You On?
