AHF Says Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ “Gilead’s Greed That Kills” Commentary is “Right on the Money”

In News by AHF

On World Hepatitis Day, with 150 million people worldwide living with Hepatitis C, AHF lauds Dr. Jeffrey Sachs for calling out Gilead Sciences on its greed, when he wrote, “Gilead is the main obstacle between tens of millions of very sick individuals and the medicine that could end their suffering and save their lives.”

Gilead owns monopoly patents on two life-saving Hepatitis C drugs—Solvadi, which it priced at $84,500USD and Harvoni, priced at $95,000—which Sachs notes, “Gilead did not discover or develop these drugs…” but instead, “…Gilead bought these drugs from their discoverers and developers…”

WASHINGTON (July 28, 2015) On today’s observation of World Hepatitis Day, with 150 million people worldwide thought to be living with Hepatitis C, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), applauded Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University for his remarkable commentary published on the Huffington Post in which he boldly called out Gilead Sciences over its insatiable greed on its drug pricing for its potentially lifesaving hepatitis and other medicines. AHF, the largest global AIDS organization and a vocal critic of runaway drug pricing and drug profiteering, notes an irony that Sachs points out about a disconnect between the Bay Area drug company’s mission versus its practices, writing, Gilead is the main obstacle between tens of millions of very sick individuals and the medicine that could end their suffering and save their lives.”

“Jeffrey Sachs is literally right on the money when it comes to his assessment of Gilead’s insatiable greed through its policies, practices and pricing regarding what should be its potentially lifesaving hepatitis and other medicines. But if people cannot access these medicines, what good is it really—medicines for the one percent?” said Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “George Merck was famously quoted on the cover of Time Magazine in 1952 saying, ‘Medicine is for people, not for profits.’ Gilead has clearly become the poster boy of the extreme opposite: its excessive greed is not even based on its own research and development, but on leveraging other scientists’ work—a calculated financial investment, like a hedge fund or investment bank might make that has everything to do with profits and very little to do with people. We welcome Dr. Sachs’ persuasive voice to the long list of advocates and activists that have been protesting Gilead and other drug companies for their pricing and policies.”

According to Sachs’ commentary, “Gilead owns the monopoly patents on two life-saving Hepatitis C drugs, Solvadi and Harvoni. Gilead did not discover or develop these drugs, except for a brief and modest role at the end of the drug-approval process. Gilead bought these drugs from their discoverers and developers in 2011, after a decade-long discovery and development process, and just before the FDA licensed the drugs in 2013. It bought them with the knowledge that it would use its greed and lobbying power to rip off the American people and deprive people around the world of the benefits of these wonder drugs.”

In a blistering closing to his piece, which is titled, ‘Gilead’s Greed that Kills’, Sachs wrote, “America has handed life and death decisions to corporate greed. Gilead is indeed the death panel that we were once warned about. Yet the Gilead death panel rations a life-saving cure not because it is too expensive to provide, but because it serves the interest of a patent-protected corporate monopoly. It is time for the U.S. citizens to demand the intellectual property rights that U.S. Government-backed science should give them; and for the government to use rational price-setting to tame untrammeled corporate greed and the monopoly power created by a highly inefficient and unfair patent system.”

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