March, 25 2020, 12:00am EDT
Gilead Must Relinquish Monopoly on Potential Coronavirus Treatment
51 Groups Warn Gilead Against Profiteering Off the Pandemic.
WASHINGTON
Gilead Sciences must immediately renounce its claim to a lucrative orphan drug designation for remdesivir - one of a few medicines being explored as a possible treatment for the coronavirus. That's what Public Citizen and 50 groups said in a letter sent today to Daniel O'Day, chairman and CEO of the pharmaceutical giant.
The orphan drug designation, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted Gilead on Monday, will provide Gilead with seven years of marketing exclusivity - helping the company to shut out competitors and charge high monopoly prices. Gilead received this designation only by rushing to file its application while there were fewer than 200,000 known COVID-19 cases in the U.S. That is the population cap for eligibility as an orphan drug - one designed to treat rare diseases. Due to a lack of widely available testing, the number of cases likely already has surpassed that mark.
"This is an unconscionable abuse of a program designed to incentivize research and development of treatments for rare diseases," the letter reads. "COVID-19 is anything but a rare disease. Calling COVID-19 a rare disease mocks people's suffering and exploits a loophole in the law to profiteer off a deadly pandemic. Making the claim to special orphan status even more outrageous is the fact that the public already has largely paid for remdesivir's development through at least $60 million in grants and innumerable contributions from federal scientists. America, and the world, has the right to expect better from Gilead."
Gilead must reverse course and renounce its claim to orphan drug designation privileges for remdesivir, the groups insist.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
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"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
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