Got a blog tip? Contact us
« Introducing iDud | Main | Bend It Like a Century 21 Agent »
Abbott to AIDS Patients: Thank you for not dying
Abbott Laboratories has come up with an ingenius way of screwing AIDS patients. Here's how it works: Abbott sells two AIDS drugs, an older drug called Norvir, and a highly profitable newer med, Kaletra. The older Norvir works only in combination with other protease inhibitors; essentially, it boosts other drugs' effectiveness. Kalectra, however, includes Norvair and therefore works alone.
When Kaletra was the only drug of its kind on the market, it made piles of money for Abbott. But in 2003, Bristol-Myser Squibb introduced a rival drug that patients needed to take with Norvir. The suits at Abbott saw this coming and worried: if Norvir remained on the market, they were going to have competition for their real money-maker.
So what did they do? Naturally, they looked into the various ways to kill off use of Norvair: they could replace the pill form of Norvir with a liquid form that tastes like vomit, jack up the price, or remove it from the market altogether. In an instance of life imitating satire, they even proposed a plan for confronting the nagging nabobs of negativity who complained: they would tell the public that Norvair was no longer available because they had to send it to " 'the developing world (i.e. Africa)' as part of a humanitarian effort" - !
What struck me about this story is that Abbott execs knew they'd get a lot of criticism from patient groups' but figured it would die down in a year or two -- and that's exactly what happened. The company may not have predicted the lawsuits that have followed -- and the public airing of internal memos -- but the incident is still an important reminder of the need for real government oversight of pharmaceutical companies.
Posted by carrie on 01/12/2007 | Permalink
Comments
Pharmaceutical companies are there to make money, not medicine. Life or death of consumers is just a fine detail.
You're right. If there's any free-standing companies that need to be politically meddled in, it's the pharmaceuticals. That way they can't afford to go wrong; otherwise the government gets dropped in it, big time. And no politician wants that.
Posted by: Anne | Jan 12, 2007 3:45:06 PM
First of all you need to learn how to spell the names of the drugs you're spouting off about and second you need to take a class on economics. The hundreds of billions of dollars spend each year on R&D need to yield something for pharma companies, right? Or should their goal be to break even? Or better yet we should have our congressmen and congresswomen decide how much profit is appropriate. How many drug discovery companies would there be if there was never a payoff for invention?
You rant about deceptive and aggressive business and marketing strategies and it's difficult to defend some of the stuff that's done in the big pharma world but don't kid yourself that the same kind of manuevers aren't being done in other industies. Do you really think these tactics are created by the drug industry?
Posted by: Chesca | Jan 12, 2007 4:12:39 PM
what's with all the trolls lately?
Posted by: Steve Lambert | Jan 12, 2007 4:22:56 PM
Voice an opinion different from the usual StayFree party line and you're a troll!
Posted by: Susan | Jan 12, 2007 4:56:16 PM
On the home page of the Abbott website right now is a feature about Abbott's support of World AIDS Day and its launch of the "Stand With Magic: Campaign to End Black AIDS" program. Yes, pharma companies, like all "good" corporations, have a single goal - to earn a profit. But that's not what they tell the public. It's certainly worth pointing out the grotesque hypocrisy here.
Chesca's point about R&D is boilerplate pharma PR and total BS - the fact that marketing budgets dwarf R&D is one clue; the high profits of pharma compared to other industries is another; and, third, the development of drugs is often based at least in part on research by the government... in fact, NIH research (that is, the federal government) was largely responsible for the development of Norvir, a fact even Abbott reps have admitted.
Posted by: carrie | Jan 12, 2007 7:07:09 PM
