[Pharm-policy] ACT UP takes Pfizer's Headquarters by surprise visit

[James Love]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 18:21:15 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@cptech.org>
To: ip-health@venice.essential.org
Subject: [Ip-health] ACT UP takes Pfizer's Headquarters by surprise visit



>From esawyer@igc.org Wed Mar 22 18:20:11 2000
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 18:06:09 -0500
From: Eric Sawyer <esawyer@igc.org>
Subject: ACT UP takes Pfizer's Headquarters by surprise visit



Contacts: Eric Sawyer: 212 864 5672, 917 951 5758;
Kate Kraus 215 731-1844;
Medecins Sans Frontieres: (Noble Peace Prize) 212 655 3764

March 21, 2000

For immediate Release:

ACT UP Members Walk In to Pfizer CEO=B9s Office, Demands Meeting;
Security Detains eight Activists for Hours, attempt to force them out of
building though loading docks.

Eight Activists from ACT UP NY walk into CEO William Steere Jr.=B9s Office
at Pfizer Worldwide Headquarters and demand a meeting. =A0Activists were
demanding that Pfizer drop the price of Diflucan, their Patented
anti-fungal drug which Pfizers prices out of the reach or the poor,
condemning hundreds of thousands of poor people with AIDS to blindness
and painful deaths.

Pfizer prices this drug in South Africa at $17 dollars per day, while the
average South African earns $7 per day. =A0Pfizer earned 1.2 billion
dollars last year alone from this drug, which they acquired by buying the
patent from a British Chemical Company (Kenneth Richardson of Empirical
Chemicals Industries, Plc. UK. filed the original and second patents on
this drug; Filed: June 1, 1982, Approved: September 13, 1983. =A0)

"Pfizer is holding a drug that can save the lives of people with
cryptococcal meningitis over the heads of sick dying poor people with
AIDS while they shake =A0them down to empty their pockets of their life=B9s
savings, or go blind and die," said Eric Sawyer of ACT UP NY, to James
Brigaitis, Diflucan=B9s Worldwide Team Leader who meet with the activists
more than one hour after several security guards escorted the activists
off the CEO=B9s floor.

"I don=B9t think your investors would like that you condemn poor people who
make $5 dollars a day in Kenya, to death by charging $20 a day for this
drug in Kenya. Especially when it is produced generically in India and
Thailand for 60cents a day, "said Mel Stevens of the Health GAP
Coalition.

Activsts were angry that Pfizer refused to return calls or letters to
Steere=B9s office and to Brigaitis, requesting a meeting and marched into
the offices demanding a meeting.

Activist in the US are supporting the calls of activist in Africa,
including the Treatment Action Campaign which has demanded through
Pfizer=B9s South African Division that Pfizer drop it=B9s price for Difluca=
n
to the generic price or stop fighting requests for importing the generic
version of the drug from other countries.

As advocates for People Living With HIV and AIDS, it is unacceptable to
ACT UP that patients are still dying today because of curable diseases.
We cannot passively stand by as patients in poor countries die because
they do not have access to medicines that can save their lives. =A0We can
not stand by as Pfizer=B9s greed kills people because they are poor and can
not afford drugs that are cheap to make, because Pfizer choose to charge
a fortune for the drugs.

We know, Medecins Sans Frontieres and its national colleagues in the
public and private sector, continue to diagnose more cases of
cryptococcal meningitis, but are incapable, in most cases, of treating
these patients afflicted with this fatal illness because of the high
price you charge for the drug. In Bangkok, a patient afflicted with
cryptococcal meningitis benefits from being treated with fluconazole at a
reasonable price, which is not the case, either in Kenya, or in South
Africa. In practical terms, this signifies that the selling price is 15
to 17 times higher in Kenya and South Africa than in Thailand, where the
medicine is not patent protected. =A0Pfizer charges two or more times the
average daily wage for a medicine that can save some one=B9s life.

ACT UP states that the populations in poor countries should be able to
pay less for essential medicines. It is the populations of rich countries
that should assume most of the costs of research and development for
these treatments. If the patent system can be an important motor to
encourage research and development of new medicines, a balance has to be
found to allow access of populations of poor countries to medicines able
to help save lives.

In the poor countries where Pfizer holds the marketing rights to
fluconazole ACT UP demands that Pfizer:

- Either lessen the sale price of fluconazole (200 mg) pills at 0.6 US
dollars or less, equal to the price of the generic version available in
Thailand;
- Or, if Pfizer estimates that it cannot sell fluconazole at this price,
allows voluntary licensing to governments and to NGOs that want such
licensing agreements.

ACT UP and Medicins Sans Fontieres supports the demand that was made
March 13, 2000 by Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa. If
Pfizer would provide voluntary licensing to TAC, under its authority in
South Africa, it could authorize the making and importation of a generic
form of quality fluconazole at a low price.



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