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…damned if you don’t.
Executives at Gilead Sciences Inc. thought they were doing a good deed in 2002 when they announced a plan to provide their AIDS drug Viread to developing nations at a sharply reduced price that would yield no profit to the company.
Since then, however, Gilead’s drug “access” program has been snarled in a string of bureaucratic snafus and miscalculations. Launched in April 2003, the program provided antiviral medication to only about 50,000 patients as of the first quarter of this year. Some AIDS activists have vilified Gilead over the slow start, accusing it of basking in good publicity while dragging its feet…
Few drug companies have launched an access program at such an early stage or with so little infrastructure in place as Gilead. In December 2002, the Foster City, Calif., company was still unprofitable, with Viread having won approval just a year earlier. Yet the company announced a sweeping plan to provide Viread to 68 poor nations at cost. (It was later extended to 97 countries.)
–David Hamilton, “A ‘Good Deed’ For AIDS Drug Hits Obstacles”, Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2006
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