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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 27, 2014
CONTACT: Terry Roethlein
EMAIL: [email protected]
PHONE: 347-449-2881
WEB: www.actupny.com // @actupny // https://www.facebook.com/groups/actupny/
ACT UP FIGHTS THE BIG PHARMA MONSTER AT GAY PRIDE:“GILEAD’S DRUG PATENTS ARE SUCKING US DRY”
ACT UP activists dressed as Gilead vampires will take to the streets of Manhattan at thisSunday’s Gay Pride march to protest the big pharma company’s bloodthirsty prices for thelifesaving drugs Sovaldi and Truvada.
Life-Saving Drugs at Bloodsucking Prices
Gilead charges $1000 per pill for Sovaldi, the profitable new cure for Hepatitis C. Thenecessary regimen of 84 pills adds up to an $84,000 cure that actually costs $40 tomanufacture. That means Gilead makes a 2800% profit on the backs of dangerously illpeople with no alternatives. Since Gilead charges as low as $2000 for the drug regimen indeveloping nations, ACT UP demands that the company regulate its pricing policies at home.
Big pharma monopolists like Gilead are engorged with blood money due to their unfairpricing. Gilead’s first quarter sales of Sovaldi for 2014 raked in $2.3 billion worldwide—themost profitable drug launch in history. Gilead’s total revenues for 2013 were $11 billionwith over $9 billion in antiviral sales alone.
PrEP Every Day Keeps HIV Away
Gilead’s drug Truvada was approved two years ago by the FDA and recommended by theCDC to prevent HIV when taken daily as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Currently, Gileadis charging over $35/day for this pill that costs 35 cents to make. Should safer sex pills that
help prevent HIV come with a $14,000/year price tag? In a market-based system, Gileadcan charge whatever it wants, but should corporations dictate the cost of our lives?
Veteran AIDS activist Jim Eigo says that Truvada-as-PrEP will not result in a significantepidemic-wide reduction in new infections until many more people have access to Truvada.“I cannot see the U.S. healthcare system as currently constituted prescribing a drug thatcosts $14 thousand a year to 250,000 individuals,” he said. “I can only see us gettinganywhere near half of those individuals on PrEP if there is a significant pricereduction from the current cost.”
Patent Override for a Health Care Emergency
An estimated 3.2 million people in the United States have chronic Hep C and about one
quarter of HIV-infected persons in the United States (275,000 out of 1.1 million) are co-infected with Hep C. 15,000 annual deaths from Hep C surpass 13,000 deaths from HIV.
During a health emergency, the U.S. government can threaten and pursue a patent overridefor a lifesaving drug with unfair pricing. This happened with the antibiotic Cipro during theAnthrax scare in 2001. ACT UP believes our Congressional leaders need to push for such anaction immediately to lower the costs of Sovaldi and Truvada immediately.
I t’s time to force Gilead to curb its thirst for profits over people’s lives.
