Why is the government allowing its own drug research to be monopolized for profit?

Corporate profiteering is allowing dangerous diseases to fester

A rich man.

How do we eradicate HIV/AIDS? One route is a vaccine, but so far that has proved a very difficult research problem. There is an ongoing clinical trial of one promising treatment in South Africa, but unlike the smallpox or polio vaccines, it appears to provide only moderate protection. Another is "pre-exposure prophylaxis," or PrEP — drugs which prevent HIV infection if taken every day. One such treatment called emtricitabine/tenofovir (better known by its brand name Truvada) works very well for this, cutting the risk of infection by up to 93 percent.

But there is a problem. As The Washington Post reports, in the United States, Truvada is monopolized by the pharmaceutical giant Gilead, which charges between $1,600 and $2,000 a month for the treatment (the wholesale price is $1,414). Bizarrely, the studies proving Truvada works for PrEP were conducted and paid for almost entirely by the federal government (the Gates Foundation also helped). The Centers for Disease Control even holds a patent on this specific treatment.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.