Every so often, us non-science folk catch something on the news that makes us stop, put down whatever we're doing, listen, and stand in awe of human progress. I've had several of these "glimpse into the future" moments: discovery of the
human genome,
cloning Dolly, to that freaky
"human-ear-grown-on-a-mouse" thing. I was checking out the news during a respite from my seemingly endless studying, and I came across this via RawStory:
Researchers May Have Stopped HIV
Are we on the brink of a cure for AIDS? How will it affect us? Do people even care?
More below...
Piscataway, N.J. -- Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a published report.
The drugs, called DAPYs, mimic the virus by changing shape, which enables them to interfere with the way HIV attacks the immune system.
Tests conducted in conjunction with Johnson and Johnson have shown the drug to be easily absorbed with minimal side effects. It also can be taken in one pill, in contrast to the drug cocktails currently taken by many AIDS patients.
"This could be it," Stephen Smith, the head of the department of infectious diseases at Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, said. "We're all looking for the next class of drugs."
Now, to be complete honest, once I started reading in the rest of the article about "X-ray crystallography", "reverse transcriptase" and "submiscroscopic proteins" my eyes kind of glazed over...but...it seems that scientists at Rutgers have made a critical breakthrough in the treatment (perhaps even cure?) of HIV.
What are the implications of this?
Well, cynical me, the first thing I thought after enviously thinking "Wow, I'm really proud my fellow human beings are so damn smart!" was "Gee, I wonder how much they'll charge for the magic pill?"
And so I did some research. It turns out that, suprisingly, the cost of AIDS drugs are decreasing:
InAfrica:
Under a special initiative brokered by the United Nations, five of the largest international pharmaceutical companies agreed Thursday to slash the cost of their AIDS treatment drugs for Africa.
The high cost of the drugs has been criticized as a major hurdle in responding to the AIDS epidemic in the poor countries of sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of HIV-positive people live.
Since AIDS is a relatively new disease, all the drugs to combat it are still being sold under drug companies' patents, which protect the companies from the local manufacture of generic treatments. But this has led to criticism that the drugs are too expensive and out of reach of poorer countries.
In South America:
The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche has agreed to reduce the price of its AIDS drug, Viracept, by 40% after pressure from the Brazilian government. The agreement comes after the government said that it would declare AIDS a "national emergency," triggering a law that would allow domestic production of cheaper, generic versions of drugs when the government judges that a manufacturer's prices are unobtainable.
But...NOT in the United States!
WASHINGTON - The government refused to intervene [May 2004] against a rapid price increase for an important AIDS drug, deciding not to override patents on Norvir in an effort to force a lower price.
Patient groups and some members of Congress had pushed the National Institutes of Health to take the unprecedented action, accusing the drugmaker of price gouging. But the NIH decided Wednesday that such an extraordinary step could have too broad an effect on the entire pharmaceutical market.
"The issue of drug pricing has global implications and, thus, is appropriately left for Congress to address legislatively," concluded Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the NIH's director.
Abbott Laboratories more than quadrupled Norvir's price late last year, to $8.57 a day from $1.71.
But the impact was felt far beyond that one drug: Low doses of Norvir are used to boost the effects of other anti-HIV medicines, meaning patients taking a wide array of AIDS drug cocktails faced substantially higher bills.
The price hike came amid already vigorous debate about why Americans pay much more for most prescription drugs than do patients in Canada, Britain and other countries.
And that got the hamster in the brain going. Why DO we pay so much more for AIDS medication? Yes, our government is a huge pharmaceutical industry whore. But putting the obvious aside, is it perhaps because we haven't stood up and proclaimed, like Brazil, like Africa, that AIDS is a national emergency in our country? We provide free AIDS drugs to Ethopians but let our citizens be screwed by skyrocketing prices as they cope with a terminal illness???
Flashback to the Cheney/Edwards debate. When moderator Gwen Ifill, said to Cheney, "I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their [white] counterparts. What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?" Cheney momentarily looked like a deer caught in the headlights (AIDS? We have AIDS in the US? Damn...we need to secure our borders!)...then he made the stunning admission that he was "not aware" that black women are 13 times as likely to die of AIDS-related causes as white women.
I'm sure this has been hashed out in diaries posted after that Vice-Presidential debate, so I won't go further into that. I just felt like now, that we are on the verge of a possible cure, we should face the magnitude of the problem we will be curing.
The possible cure for AIDS is being developed right here, on American soil, where ironically no one wants to talk about the AIDS epidemic killing so many American children. When that magic pill, if we are so blessed to discover one, finally comes out, how many people will think "oh, that's great. Now all those poor people in Africa will be healed" instead of thinking about their own neighbors who are struggling with the disease?
Just some random thoughts. I'm really excited about the news of a breakthough, and hopefully, this will raise some awareness of the issue here in America.