Taxol and the ripoff of cancer patients
TAXOL AND THE RIPOFF OF CANCER PATIENTS
WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?
Priced at over $2000 per injection, the anti-cancer drug Taxol, sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb under the brand name Paclitaxel, retails at more than 20 times its production cost. The company claims high drug prices are necessary to make up for high research and development expenses. However, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) didn’t develop taxol – the National Institutes of Health developed it with U.S. taxpayer funds.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI)- a division of the National Institutes of Health – began developing taxol in the 1960s. The NCI discovered the substance’s medicinal value, did all of the biological cell screening, chemical purification, isolation and identification, large-scale production and dosage formulation, and toxicology studies. It filed and documented an Investigational New Drug application with the FDA, and sponsored all clinical (human) studies of the drug. Then the NCI entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Bristol-Myers Squibb. This granted the company exclusive rights to sell the drug. In return, the company agreed to provide the NCI with 17 kilograms of taxol. Experts believe that providing these 17 kilograms cost less than $5 million.
Bristol-Myers Squibb makes over $1 billion on Taxol profits annually.
It should be noted that taxol is only one example of a drug which was developed with taxpayer funds and then passed on to a corporation. It should also be noted that taxpayer funds (in the form of Medicaid) are often used to buy the given-away drugs back from the companies the drugs were given to.
A law passed in 1986 known as the Technology Transfer Act authorizes federal laboratories to enter into exclusive contracts with corporations, allowing the corporations to make and sell products – such as taxol – invented by the government. The government labs have effectively given away hugely profitable taxpayer financed inventions in the form of royalties or, more importantly, meaningful restraints on company pricing.
WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?
1. DOWNLOAD, COPY, AND DISTRIBUTE THIS PAMPHLET! It is saved as a PDF file, so you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have it, click here to download it for free.
2. Support the Affordable Prescription Drugs Act. This act would end the regular practice of handing out patents and exclusive licenses to companies for medicines developed by American taxpayer funds. If you want to see this legislation passed into law, contact your Representative in the House. Express outrage that YOUR tax dollars were used to develop important drugs that were then licensed exclusively to firms that are now free to charge ridiculous monopoly prices. Let your Representative know that you expect him or her to support legislation for the compulsory licensing of these medicines. Then contact your Senators and urge them to sponsor similar legislation. The number for both houses of Congress is 202-225-3121, and the operator can give you the phone number for any Representative or Senator.