“The progress made by science against HIV/AIDS is nothing less remarkable,” Health writes … more
The US Food and Drug Administration approved one shot Last month that effectively prevents HIV. At risk people just have to get injection every six months. The new drug, called Lenacapavir, is almost exactly coming 44 years After the first case of AIDS it was mentioned by what is now known as Disease Control and Prevention Centers or CDC.
The progress made by science against HIV/AIDS is nothing less remarkable. For many of the last four decades, the diagnosis of HIV/AIDS was death penalty.
At the top of AIDS crisis in 1995, the mortality rate for HIV/AIDS is over 16 for every 100,000 people. By 2019, it had fallen over one per 100,000. This progress was almost entirely due to developments in pharmaceutical therapy, which was converted into a fatal plague in a chronic situation.
Some 16.5 million Lives were saved by AIDS medicines between 2001 and 2021. According to the World Health Organization, 2023 around 72% The people living with HIV/AIDS had a suppressed viral load – which means that the disease was undetectable and mostly non -transferable, thanks to medication.
And now, Lenakapavirre has been shown to provide “an almost perfect shield against HIV infection”, such as New York Times Put it.
But the drug was not invented overnight. The product has been spent for 20 years, the product of countless scientists involved in high -stage costly research. The fact that Lenacapavir will soon be available to patients is a proof of the power of America’s biopharmaceutical sector.
Unfortunately, legislators are working to upgrade the system itself that makes drugs loudly like Lenapapagiri. Democrats have long tried to impose European -style price controls in the United States. Republicans – including President Trump, who expressed enthusiasm for price controls on prescription drugs – embrace similar designs in growing numbers.
Researchers were first isolated the molecule that would become Lenakapafir in 2016. This discovery was the end result of two decades of research. It will take another 10 years for researchers to bring this molecule to the market.
As Dr. William Pao noted in recent Basis news piece, “Lenakapagiri breaks all [the] rules “of treatment with HIV/AIDS. By the time it was isolated, there were already several effective HIV/AIDS treatments on the market. The development of a new, non -conventional treatment made no sense.
But, as Pao notes, “[E]A very challenge can be turned into an opportunity for innovation with some creative thought, and that’s exactly what Gilead did. ”
Bringing a new drug from the laboratory to the market – even a less innovative than Lenakapavir – is dangerous and expensive. It lasts between 10 and 15 years and the cost around $ 2.6 billionaverage. Of every 100 drugs entering clinical trials, less than eight reach a pharmacy shelves.
Drug companies use money from successful medicines to offset the cost of failures. And they are willing to take a chance in new projects precisely because they know that in the United States, they will have the opportunity to restore and gain their investment performance.
The economic reality in countries that impose price controls on medicinal products are different. These pricing ceilings limit the possible performance of drug companies to new medicines. So they tend to delay entry into these markets.
A study He found that, since October 2022, patients in Canada had access to only 45% of the drugs that started worldwide between 2012 and 2021. For patients in the United Kingdom, the corresponding number was only 59%.
In the United States, patients had access to 85% of these drugs.
However, US lawmakers are still working to implement pricing checks here. Trump’s administration recently revived “the most favored nation“Policy from 2020, which will link US drug prices with the lowest price paid in other developed countries.
If this system had come into force 20, 10 or even five years ago, it is likely that Lenakapagiri would never have done so – let’s say nothing about countless other AIDS medicines and other diseases that have been developed in recent years.
For future patients, let’s hope that legislators will abandon their plans to impose price controls – and allow a healthy market for medicinal products to bloom.
