No winners in drug fight
Date: 6.4.2006
The protesters have had the chief executive in their sights for some time now. They've paraded outside his corporate offices. They've lobbied the companies he serves as a board member. They've flooded his phones with calls.
And what has this chief executive done to deserve this treatment? His company discovered one of the most promising AIDS drugs in recent years--that's what.
Last fall, North Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories came up with a new version of Kaletra that can stand up to the heat of equatorial Africa. That marked a major breakthrough. The existing version of Abbott's best-selling AIDS drug requires refrigeration, limiting Kaletra's reach on a continent where electricity can be scarce and unreliable.
Now that the new Kaletra is here, AIDS fighters can't wait to get it into the hands of patients in Africa and elsewhere. They have gotten into a bitter argument with Abbott over how quickly the drug will reach Africa and how much it will cost once it gets there.
The standoff is a shame because it undercuts what both sides say they most want to do: Help AIDS victims in Africa and elsewhere. Instead of bickering, the two should be working together.
For now, though, the fight is on.
Publicizing fight over drug
The group Doctors Without Borders is mounting a public campaign to criticize Abbott because the drug still is not available in Africa, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it five months ago. A like-minded group called the Student Global AIDS Campaign launched a pressure campaign aimed at Abbott CEO Miles White earlier this month.
The student group's campaign is designed to publicize a demand that Abbott make the new Kaletra immediately available--at no profit--in 117 needy countries and increase supply by providing a recipe for the drug to generic drug makers.
White is frustrated. In his first interview since the controversy began, he said, "This falls into the category of no good deed goes unpunished." White is a board member of Tribune Co., which publishes this newspaper.
The urgency for treating the AIDS epidemic could not be greater. Last year, the number of people living with AIDS topped 40 million for the first time, with more than 25 million of them living in sub-Saharan Africa. About 3.2 million new cases were diagnosed in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
AIDS activists want Abbott to move immediately to get its newest drug to some of the world's most remote regions, but Abbott says that's not possible just now. The company needs regulatory approvals from individual African countries before distributing the drug there.
Doctors Without Borders offers a quick fix: Abbott could ship the new Kaletra from its plant in Europe, where the drug still awaits regulatory clearance, to Abbott's distribution system in the U.S. The stopover would endow the drug with FDA approval--an important step toward qualifying it for distribution in most African countries, Doctors Without Borders officials say.
`A great responsibility'
On March 15, in a publicity-generating flourish, the doctors group placed an order for 4,762 bottles of heat-stable Kaletra and declared that Abbott should charge "no more than $500 per patient per year." The group vows to obtain the necessary permits to distribute the drug.
"Abbott has a great responsibility here," says Nicolas de Torrente, executive director of Doctors Without Borders U.S.A. "They have a monopoly. Through their decisions, they can decide if the drug becomes available and affordable."
Both sides speak in bold, simple statements but shed little light on the problems at hand.
Abbott's position is perhaps overly legalistic. Surely the company could exert more creative and forceful energy to obtain the necessary approvals. One obvious first step: Fill the Doctors Without Borders order at cut-rate prices, then let the doctors handle the paperwork.
The doctors group, for its part, is oversimplifying the complexities that prevent even powerful American drug companies from sprinkling new medicines wherever they want.Somewhere amid the rhetoric and grandstanding sits the uncomfortable truth: There are no quick fixes to Africa's AIDS epidemic. Abbott and Doctors Without Borders can make the most progress only if they abandon this fruitless fight and look instead for ways they can complement each other. Even if Doctors Without Borders can obtain special regulatory clearances, that would be a stopgap measure at best. The group's efforts won't generate much more than headlines unless they become part of a bigger plan.
"Source":[ http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/shopping/chi-0603260165mar26,1,2367337.story?coll=chi-ent_shopping-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true].
