ARV's

I recently read an article about how the U.S. Government is blocking the generic production and sale of HIV/AIDS drugs on the world market. The World Health Organization has approved the use of generic HIV/AIDS drugs. Beyond the egotism of the U.S. Government, this is clearly an attempt to protect the profits of the U.S. pharmaceutical companies that sell the brand-name equivalent to the generic HIV/AIDS drugs. The U.S. government is arguing that the antiquated and slow U.S. Food and Drug Administration have not approved the use of the generic drugs. We now have 6 approved drugs for Erectile Dysfunction, but when it comes to helping other countries with HIV/AIDS, forget it.

If you think this doesn't affect you, this argument and others are the same ones preventing cheaper foreign drugs from entering the US market, like buying drugs from Canada .

This sparked my interest in the pharmaceutical companies that make the brand-name drugs. So I figured I would research the companies and that lead to this write up, my first ranting on my web site.

A stat I keep running across as I look into this. The blocking of generic drugs will result in two to four times fewer people receiving drug treatment. Without generic drugs the best world price would be US$562 per person per year, and the regiment is 6 pills per day. The generic equivalents are 3 in one pills taken twice a day and would cost as little as US$138 per person per year. Let me put this into prospective. Botswana , touted to have the highest aids prevalence rate in the world, estimated to be 30% of the population between 15 and 49 years of age, has an average income of US$275 per month. If you have a job (47% unemployment) you would have to spend 2 full months salary on non-generic drugs. The average American makes US$36,300, faces 5.6% unemployment and spends US$481 per year on cable television.

Who are these US pharmaceutical companies?

Ok, as I started looking into this my intention was to find what companies and brand name drugs the US government was protecting. As I dig through crazy name brands, generic names, laboratory names for drugs that also have name brands and generic names, and just plain coded designations for drugs, I am not sure which drugs are at the center of the argument. So what I did was followed a drug that shows up in a number of places “ Combivir” manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.**

Combivir is GlaxoSmithKline's brand name for an anti-HIV medication. It is in a category of HIV medicines called nucleoside reverse transcripts inhibitors (NRTIs). Combivir prevents HIV from altering the genetic material of healthy T-cells. This prevents the cells from producing new virus and decreases the amount of virus in the body. This drug is actually a combination of two other drugs.

Combivir sold in the US from a random on-line source lists for US$9.15 per tablet. The generic listed Combivir sells for US$5.00 per tablet. Both must be taken twice a day and with at least one other anti-HIV drug, usually a protease inhibitor (PI) or a non-nucleoside reverse transcripts inhibitor (NNRTI). Now my unscientific research here disputes the calculations earlier in this rant. Here is the deal. Many pharmaceutical companies have reduced the costs of drugs in many foreign countries and profit margins on drugs sold in the US are higher than anywhere else in the world. That is nice of them you might say, but so have the generic producers, so generic drugs are still cheaper in other countries. Why don't people just buy the generic drugs? They can, so long as the governments of those countries haven't sided with the US government to enforce paten laws. The US government puts pressure on foreign governments to enforce US paten laws, usually at the threat of “no US aid monies for you if you don't do as we say.” The US government at the heart of this argument has actually tied aid money to the use of non-generic drugs. For instance in South Africa , any US funded health project gets no money unless the South African government uses brand name drugs.

Again this is why you hear stories of people traveling across the Canadian or Mexican boarder to purchase generic and non-generic prescription drugs at a reduced cost.

Let's talk GlaxoSmithKline.

GlaxoSmithKline made US$11 billion in 2003. With a Net Profit Margin of 21.41%.

I love the numbers: Glaxo could give every person in the world, US$1.73 just from last years profits. (1.2 billion people live on less than one dollar per day.) There are an estimated 40,000,000 people living with AIDS around the world. Glaxo could buy every person in the world living with aids the full generic drug treatment with just half its yearly profits. And they are just one of a number of pharmaceutical companies.

Let's not let the US government off the hook. So far we have spent approximately US$128 billion on the Iraq war.(see costofwar.com) 19 days of war would purchase a year's supply of generic drugs for every man, women and child living with aids. No war would buy every aids patient generic drugs for over 20 years.

An estimated 8,000 people die every day due to AIDS-related complications

Over 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries. Of the more than six million people in urgent clinical need of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment,

only 400,000 have access to it.

** Many a side notes start here. I am not an expert, just a ranting out of work guy with time on my hands that is sick of the injustices dealt out by the US . If you work for GlaxoSmithKline and feel like suing me, go ahead. I have a slightly used bike, a tent and a couple of sleeping bags, you can have them. It would be a small price to pay for what I am sure would lead to some great ranting material. All my research comes off the Internet. I only use sites I deem reputable. This isn't a scientific paper; the purpose is to get the 3 people that are going to read this to think a little.