Patent Pending
HIV/AIDS is an incurable disease that affects 36.9 million people worldwide, with over 1.5 million being under the age of 15. To help lower this number, antiretroviral (ART) medications have slowly been released to the public over the last few years. One of these and the most prevalent is PEP, or post-exposure prophylaxis, and it is made to protect you after you've come into sexual contact with someone who has HIV/AIDS. Another medicine that's similar is called PrEP, and it's meant to take for reducing your chances of contracting the disease before you're exposed to it.
These medicines have to done a tremendous amount of work in helping HIV+ and HIV- communities, but the help doesn't come without a huge price tag attached to it. P(r)EP medications cost anywhere from $600 to $2,000 for a month’s supply, not including the doctor fees that come with it since you can only get it in an emergency room or health clinic. This becomes more bewildering when you consider the time frame for getting PEP is 3 days because the medication can only help you post exposure for that amount of time before it won't work.
In comparison, birth control pill rates in the United States of America typically range from $0-$50 a month, with insurance companies covering the bulk of the charges. That is almost 40 times less than the HIV medication. Many countries (including all of those in North America and of most Europe, Asia, & Southern Africa) also have subsidies available on the pill or offer it for free.
The reason it is so pricey stems from the FDA approved patent on emtricitabine, a key component to Truvada (another HIV treatment) and PrEP. The patent strictly limits the production rights of the medications to one company, Gilead, mainly for profit. There are similar patents like this that exist, and one was on a gene in your own body. Breast cancer research halted for years because a company named Myriad Genetics put a patent on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in your body who's mutated versions can lead to breast and ovarian cancer. This was so that only they could do cancer research on the gene, and Gilead is pulling a similar stunt. But can you imagine portions of your own DNA being owned by a company you've never heard of? Or by a company at all and not your own person? It's scary.
Patents aside, HIV/AIDS is a debilitating disease, and the treatments for it are incredibly expensive, especially if you consider that the targets for the disease are disenfranchised groups such as the young and impoverished. Protests for the allowance of PEP to be mass produced have been going on for years, so hopefully we'll make a major change in healthcare for the upcoming future.
