“During a House hearing on Thursday [May 16], Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked the CEO of one of America's largest pharmaceutical companies a simple but crucial question: ‘Why does a life-saving HIV drug that costs $8 a month in Australia have a $2,000 price tag in the U.S.?’
“Gilead
chief executive Daniel O'Day declined to comment on the low price of Truvada
for PrEP in Australia, but said the reason the cost is close to $2,000—'the
current list price is $1,780,’ he said—in the United States is because the drug
has ‘patent protection.’
“As
the Washington Post reported in
March, the development of Truvada as a treatment for HIV was ‘almost fully
funded by U.S. taxpayers.’
“The
U.S. government patented the treatment in 2015, according to the Post, but has ‘opted not to file an
infringement suit to enforce’ the patent even as Gilead—which argues the
government patent is invalid—rakes in billions of dollars in profits from
Truvada.
“Ocasio-Cortez
highlighted these facts during the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing
on Thursday.
“‘I
think it's important that we notice here that we the public, we the people,
developed this drug, we paid for this drug, we led and developed all of the
grounding patents to create PrEP, and then that patent has been privatized
despite the fact that that patent is owned by the public,’ said Ocasio-Cortez. ‘We
refuse to enforce it.’
“‘There's
no reason this should be $2,000 a month,’ Ocasio-Cortez added. ‘People are
dying because of it. We own the intellectual property for it. People are dying
for no reason. For no reason. We developed this drug.’
“In a
tweet following Thursday's hearing, Ocasio Cortez answered her own question on
why Truvada's price is $8 in Australia. ‘Spoiler: Because Australia has
universal healthcare,’ wrote the New York
congresswoman.
“‘I
don't blame you. I blame us. I blame this body,’ Ocasio-Cortez said during the
hearing. Because every single developed country in the world guarantees
healthcare as a right except us. Except the United States. Because we can't get
it together. Because we don't have the fortitude to kick pharmaceutical
lobbyists [out of] our congressional offices.’”
“…[T]o be indifferent to suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred… [I]ndifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.
ReplyDelete“Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees, [the AIDS victim] -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own. Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment…” (Elie Wiesel, “Perils of Indifference”).