Breakthroughs in medical research in the mid 1990s provided new hope for people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Today, only five percent of those infected even have access to these life-sustaining drugs. But a primary concern of the
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Abbott Laboratories quadrupled the price of its protease inhibitor Norvir—a drug that stops the replication of the virus—in 2003 to beat out rival pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb. Bristol-Myers’ drug Reyataz depends on its use in combination with Norvir as part of an anti-retroviral therapy.
Abbott made this move to pave the way for its newer protease inhibitor, Kaletra. It wanted Kaletra to have a clear path for market domination. After massively increasing Norvir’s price, Kaletra sales increased by 10 percent in 2004-05.
Kaletra is now used by 35 percent of people with HIV infection in the United States. Its annual sales have reached $400 million—2006 sales are expected to be $500 million. Norvir, by comparison, brings in only an eighth of that.
Even with Abbott jockeying for a monopoly on the market, Bristol-Myers’ Reyataz has not disappeared. It enjoyed over $370 in sales in the first three financial quarters of 2006—a 25 percent increase from 2005.
As if the price gouging wasn’t bad enough, Abbott executives discussed whether or not to pull Norvir from the global market altogether. They also contemplated withdrawing Norvir pills from only the U.S. market and offering it in its liquid form.
These pondered changes may not seem significant, but they were ideas meant to achieve the same ends as the massive price increase—greater profits and increased market share.
Norvir in its liquid form is highly unpopular and Abbott execs knew this. “This fluid that has been—I’ll just say it—characterized as tasting like someone else’s vomit,” said John Leonard, Abbot’s vice president of global pharmaceutical research and development.
Because of a 1998 manufacturing problem, consumers were forced to use the liquid form for a period of time. They reported going to extreme lengths to take the medication and avoid tasting it.
Abbott claims that the huge price increase “better reflected” Norvir’s medical value. The company does not care that Norvir is one of the HIV drugs with the most severe side effects, including diarrhea, vomiting and extreme muscle weakness.
Challenging Abbott
These high profit maneuvers have not gone unchallenged.
AIDS activists protested in front of Abbott’s international headquarters outside of Chicago and at the annual shareholder’s meeting. Three hundred doctors also joined together calling for a boycott of Abbott products and prohibiting Abbott representatives from entering their medical establishments.
The battle has also entered the legal front.
Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan has carried out a three-year investigation, stating that Abbott’s price hikes may violate state consumer-fraud laws.
In a recent lawsuit, two people with AIDS joined the Service Employees International Union Health and Welfare Fund to
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One of the plaintiffs, Allen Thornell, was forced to leave his job after his insurance co-payments jumped to $1,000 a month for Norvir. He now has different insurance with a fixed co-payment.
For those people using Reyataz in combination with Norvir, the cost went from $2,500 a year to over $11,000. Kaletra then became a more economical option—at $7,000 a year.
All these moves to challenge Abbott Laboratories are progressive and important steps in building yet a bigger struggle for people’s health.
Funding HIV/AIDS research
The ruling class has been able to pull together resources for other scientific advances—in fact, a demand by early AIDS activists still rings true today—a Manhattan Project for AIDS.
From 1942-46, the U.S. was most interested in how the U.S. ruling class could reap the benefits of World War II. To do this they wanted an edge that no other power possessed—nuclear weapons.
The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers set up what came to be known as the Manhattan Project, employing over 130,000 people and costing $20 billion based on today’s prices. These tremendous resources, coordinated by the capitalist state, were able to produce nuclear weapons—weapons then used to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to send a message to the world that the United States would get want it wanted.
But, unlike the Manhattan Project, a centralized effort to fund HIV/AIDS research does not serve the imperialist goals of the U.S. capitalist state. Developing HIV/AIDS medicine and, ultimately, a vaccine would benefit ailing people more than corporations.
This equation is clear in the way the U.S. government has treated the issue. The government has involved itself in HIV/AIDS drug research—but on the side of the pharmaceutical companies, not the people.
In May 2004, the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, held a public hearing in response to advocacy groups to consider authorizing the production of generic Norvir. The NIH has the authority to make Norvir and other drugs like it available to everyone at affordable prices. Several years earlier, the NIH funded Abbott’s initial research in Norvir with a $3.5 million grant.
But the NIH decided against authorizing a generic drug.
Imagine if the state’s resources were used to fight HIV/AIDS, to find a vaccine, a cure and to make current therapies available worldwide at low or no cost.
The private ownership of these resources and the drive for ever-greater profits stands in the way of such a possibility.
