Msg#: 9914 *Samples* 03-06-92 00:09:00

Subj: WHO'S MAKING MONEY OUT OF AIDS?

Via The NY Transfer News Service 718-448-2358, 718-448-2683

GREEN LEFT WEEKLY Issue #46 March 4, 1992

Who's making money out of AIDS?

By Steve Painter

The AIDS pandemic is a disaster for humanity, but a gold mine for
some multinational chemical companies, it seems. While AIDS is still
spreading in advanced countries such as Australia and the USA, nine
out of 10 new HIV infections are now occurring in the Third World.
However, most treatments coming out of the laboratories of North
America and Europe are affordable only in the richest countries.

In Africa, where it is expected that 18 million people will be HIV

positive by the end of the century, most governments and health
authorities can't even afford the blood tests that would enable them
to keep track of the problem. In South Africa, the richest country on
the continent and by no means the one with the greatest AIDS problem,
it is estimated that the direct and indirect cost of the disease will
be around $20 billion in the next eight years. HIV infection is
expected to treble in Asia within five years.

Meanwhile, the chemical giant Burroughs-Wellcome has cornered the

market in AZT (zidovudine), the main drug so far with a proven ability
to slow the progress of AIDS. Last year, the company raked in about
$300 million from AZT - just one of the newer lines in an extensive
range. The drug was licensed for use in humans only four years ago.
About 40% of the take from AZT is estimated to be profit, even after
the company reduced the price by around 20% in response to protests.

In the US, a year's supply of AZT for one person costs around
US$8000, perhaps okay for those who have adequate medical insurance,
but a disaster for those who don't. US AIDS activists say these prices
don't reflect the drug's production cost; bootleg supplies are much
cheaper, though illegal. Australian prices for patented AZT are even
higher, largely because the drug companies are aware that Medicare
will pick up the tab.

The company is not simply recovering development costs. A March 1991

court action by the New York-based People With AIDS group made it
clear Burroughs-Wellcome contributed very little to the development of
the drug, and its right to the patent is dubious. The AIDS-related
qualities of the drug were first developed by researchers for the US
National Cancer Institute, not Burroughs- Wellcome.

Jerome Horowitz of the Michigan Cancer Foundation discovered AZT in

1964, but at the time it seemed to have no useful role and it was
extremely toxic. In 1974, Wolfram Ostertag at Germany's Max Planck
Institute discovered that AZT inhibited retroviruses in mice, but at
that time no such viruses were known to exist in humans.
Wellcome studied the compound from 1982 to 1984, but in 1984
declined to participate in an NCI search for drugs that would work
against HIV/AIDS because, it said, human retroviruses were not
treatable, live HIV was too dangerous to work with and HIV experiments
were unlikely to be profitable.
 Eventually Wellcome handed over some compounds to the NCI for study,
and the NCI discovered the AIDS-inhibiting qualities of AZT. Wellcome
immediately filed for a British patent even though its scientists had
not discovered the drug and had not participated in the HIV
experiments.

It later took out a US patent as well. The US application did not

reveal that work on the drug in humans had been done at the NCI and
Duke University. The patent was approved in 1988.

In 1989, NCI director Sam Broder and several colleagues wrote to the
New York Times saying, "one of the key obstacles to the development of
AZT was that Burroughs-Wellcome did not work with live AIDS virus nor
wish to receive samples from AIDS patients".

It seems the prices of other AIDS drugs are also kept outrageously
high by the fact that their patents are owned by private chemical
companies. Acyclovir, another Wellcome line, netted the company around
$400 million last year. This one is more established than AZT, having
been on the shelves for nearly a decade.

Burroughs-Wellcome is by no means the only AIDS profiteer. In 1984

Lypho-Med, a smaller US company, increased the price of a pneumonia-
fighting drug, pentamidine, from around $34 to around $136 per unit as
its use increased among people with AIDS. By 1988, public protest
forced the price down again.

Another company, Roche, controls ddI and ddC, which are similar to
AZT and often used in conjunction with it. They cost about two-thirds
the price of AZT. Roche also sells Bactrim, used to fight pneumonia
and urinary infections in people with AIDS. Private multinational
companies control most of the research into AIDS because they have
budgets many times larger than those of most government research
bodies.

At least a dozen potential AIDS vaccines are being tested at

present. If the chemical companies run true to form, none of them is
likely to be much cheaper than AZT.

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