IIBMS – Glaxo SmitbKine, Bristol – Myers Squibb
Case – 1 Glaxo SmitbKine, Bristol – Myers Squibb IIBMS – Glaxo Smitb Kine In 2004, the United Nations estimated that the previous year 5 million more people around the world had contracted the AIDS virus, 3 million had died, and a total of 40 million people were living with the infection. Seventy percent, or about 28 million of these, lived in sub – Saharan Africa, where the epidemic was at its worst. Sub – Saharan Africa consists of the 48 countries and 643 million people who reside south of the Saharan desert. In 16 of these countries, 10 percent are infected with the virus, in 6 other nation, 20 percent are infected. The UN predicted that in these 6 nations two – thirds of all 15 – year olds would eventually die of AIDS and in those where 10 percent were infected, half of all 15 – year – olds would die of AIDS. For the entire sub –Saharan region, the average level of infection among adults was 8.8 percent of Botswana’s population was infected, 34 percent of Zimbabwe’s, 31 percent of Lesotho’s, and 33 percent of Swaziland’s. Family life had been destroyed by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of married couples, who left more than 11 million orphans to fend for themselves. Gangs and rebel armies forced thousands of orphans to join them. While crime and violence were rising, agriculture was in decline as orphaned farm children tried desperately to remember had to manage on their own. Labor productivity had been cut by 50 percent in the hardest – hit nations, school and hospital systems were decimated, and entire national economies were on the verge of collapse. With its huge burden of AIDS illnesses, African nation desperately needed medicines, both antibiotics to treat the many opportunistic diseases that strike AIDS victims and HIV antiretrovirals that can indefinitely prolong the lives of people with AIDS. Unfortunately, the people of sub – Saharan Africa could not afford the prices that the major pharmaceutical drug companies charged for their drugs. The major drug companies, for example, charged $10,000 to $ 15,000 for a year’s supply the antiretrovirals they marketed in the United States. Yet the average per –person annual income in sub – Saharan Africa was $500. the AIDS crisis in sub – Saharan Africa posed a major moral problem for the drug companies of the developed world: How should they respond to the growing needs of this terribly destitute region of the world? These problems were especially urgent for the companies that held patents on several AIDS antiretrovirals, such as GlaxoSmithKline and Bristol- Myers Squibb. GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical company founded in 1873, with 2003 revenues of $38.2 billion and profits of $8 billion, held the patents to five antiretrovirals it had created. Formed from the merger of three large drug companies (Glaxo, Burroughs Wellcome, and SmithKline Beecham), it was one of the world ‘s largest and most profitable companies. Bristol – Myers Squibb, an American pharmaceutical company founded in 1858, was also the result of mergers (between Squibb and Bristol – Myers). It had 2003 profit of $$3.1 billion on revenues of $20.8 billion ad had created and now held the patents to two antiretrovirls. Although AIDS was first noticed in the United State in 1981 when the CDC noted an alarming increase of a rare cancer among gay man, it is now known to have afflicted a Bantu male in 1959, and possibly jumped from monkeys to humans centuries earlier. In 1982, with 1,614 diagnosed cases in the United State, the disease was termed AIDS (for “acquired immune deficiency syndrome”), and the following year French scientists identified HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) as its cause. HIV is a virus that destroys the immune system that the body uses to fight off infections and diseases. If the immune system breaks down, the body is unable to fight off illnesses and becomes afflicted with various “opportunistic diseases “- infections and cancers. The virus, which can tack up to 10 year to break down a person’s immune system, is transmitted through the exchange of body fluids including blood, semen, vaginal fluids, and breast milk. The main modes of infection are through unprotected sex, intravenous drug use, and child birth. In 1987, Burroughs Wellcome (now part of GlaxoSmithKline) developed AZT, the first FDA-approved antiretroviral, that is, a drug that attacks the HIV virus itself. When wellcome priced AZT at $10,000 for a year’s supply, it was accused of price gouging, forcing a price reducing of 20 percent the following year. In 1991, Bristol- Myers Squibb developed didanosine, a new class of antiretroviral drug called nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors. In 1995, Roche developed saquinavir, a third new class of antiretroviral drug called a protease inhibitor, and the following year Roxane Laboratories announced nevirapine, another new class of antiretrovirals called nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors . By the middle 1990s, drug companies had developed four distinct classes of antiretrovirals, as several drugs that attacked the opportunistic diseases that afflict AIDS patients. In 1996, Dr. David Ho was honored for his discovery that by taking a combination- a “cocktail”– of three of than four classes of antiretroviral drags, it is possible to kill off virtually all of than HIV virus in a patient’s body, allowing the immune system to recover, and thereby effectively bringing the disease into remission. Costing upwards of $20,000 a year (the medicines had to be taken for the rest of the patient’s life), the new drug treatment enabled AIDS patients to once again live normal, healthy lives. By 1998, the large drug companies would have developed 12 different antiretroviral drugs that could be used in various combination to from the “cocktails” that could bring the disease into remission. The combination drug regimes, however, were complicated and had to be exactly adhered to. Several dozen pills had to be taken at various specific times during the day and night, every day, or the treatment would
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