Thailand weighs offer for AIDS drugs
Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:23:45 GMTBy GRANT PECK, Associated Press Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai health officials said Tuesday that the government would consider an offer by U.S. drug maker Abbott Laboratories to supply Thailand and other countries with its AIDS-fighting drugs at a discounted price.
Abbott earlier Tuesday announced that after consulting with the U.N.'s World Health Organization, it had decided to offer its drug Kaletra, also marketed under the name Aluvia, at a reduced price in the developing world.
"The company today offered to lower its price for its AIDS drug Kaletra from 5,938 baht per patient per month to 3,488.20 baht per patient per month which could end up being cheaper than its generic version," Dr. Siriwat Tiptaradol, secretary-general of Thailand's Food and Drug Administration, was ed saying in a news release from his agency.
The offer appeared to be a breakthrough in ending a dispute between Thailand and Abbott over the high price of Kaletra, which comprises the pharmaceutical ingredients lopinavir and ritonavir.
Thailand earlier this year announced it was breaking the patent on Kaletra so it could provide cheaper generic versions of the drug to those in need.
Abbott responded by declaring it would not introduce any new drugs in Thailand because it failed to honor its intellectual property rights. An Abbott spokeswoman, Melissa Brotz, said Tuesday that policy has not changed.
Thailand's position drew much criticism from the local and foreign business community, while Abbott's action drew a firestorm of protest from health activists.
Siriwat said that the FDA will forward the Illinois-based company's offer to the Public Health Ministry for further deliberation.
The ministry in January issued so-called "compulsory licenses" allowing the use of much cheaper generic versions of Kaletra, as well as the blood thinner Plavix, marketed by France's Sanofi-Aventis SA and U.S. drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
According to World Trade Organization agreements on intellectual property, a government may issue a compulsory license in case of a national public health emergency. Such action has been taken by several countries, most notably Brazil and India, especially for AIDS medicines.
A news release from Abbott said the company will offer its AIDS drugs to NGOs and governments of more than 40 low and low-middle income countries at a price of $1,000 per patient per year.
"This price is lower than any generic price available in the world today for this medicine and is approximately 55 percent less than the average current price for these countries," it said, adding that Thailand is one of the countries being offered the discount.
"Abbott did not say that they wanted us to revoke the compulsory license. There was no condition. They were just here to offer the price reduction so that people can have access to their medicines," Dr. Suchart Chongprasert, another Thai FDA official, told The Associated Press.
"We want to thank the company for their understanding of our position and the offer that they made which will benefit Thai patients," he said.
Abbott's statement said the company was acting "to further increase access and address the debate around pricing of HIV medicines: by increasing affordability while preserving the system that enables the discovery of new medicines."
The World Heath Organization said it welcomed Abbott's pricing decision, and that it would work with all concerned parties "to find mechanisms that address the immediate need to rapidly increase access and affordability of life saving drugs, while maintaining the long term need to foster research and development in innovative medicines."
Teen who shot grandparents gets support
Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:01:26 GMTCOLUMBIA, S.C. - Supporters are rallying around a teenager who killed his grandparents and blamed the antidepressant drug Zoloft. Every week, Janet Sisk rises as early as 5 a.m. and drives nearly 100 miles to spend her Sundays with the boy who was just 12 when he murdered his grandparents in their sleep.
She planned to spend part of Easter weekend sitting across a table from Christopher Pittman at his maximum security prison in Columbia. She also made the trek from her home in Charlotte, N.C., to spend Christmas Eve with him.
She's not alone — a half-dozen people drawn to Pittman's case visit him weekly. Another woman has flown from Michigan to see him twice in the past year. Hundreds of others rally around him in other ways: promising to pay for college when he gets out of prison, and campaigning for extra safeguards for arrested juveniles in South Carolina.
To Sisk, director of the Juvenile Justice Foundation, Pittman has become more than the youth who attracted worldwide attention when he blamed the 2001 slayings on Zoloft, the antidepressant he was taking. She now thinks of him as her third son.
"He's shy and he's quiet and he's polite," Sisk said recently. "It's like we've been friends with him forever."
Pittman used a pump-action shotgun to shoot his grandparents, Joe and Joy Pittman, and then set fire to their Chester County home.
During his trial, not held until four years later, Pittman's attorneys unsuccessfully argued he was involuntarily intoxicated by Zoloft and did not know right from wrong. A judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison.
Pfizer Inc., the manufacturer of Zoloft, said in a news release after the verdict that Zoloft "didn't cause his problems, nor did the medication drive him to commit murder. On these two points, both Pfizer and the jury agree."
Zoloft is the most widely prescribed antidepressant in the United States, with 32.7 million prescriptions written in 2003. In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration ordered Zoloft and other antidepressants to carry "black box" warnings — the government's strongest warning short of a ban — about an increased risk of suicidal behavior in children.
Now 6-foot-2, Pittman turns 18 on Monday in an adult prison where he was moved six months ago from a juvenile facility, but the supporters who visit him say that even Pittman doesn't consider himself to be grown up.
"Chris said, 'You have to remember, that everyone here is the age that they were when they went in,'" said Teresa Strattard, the Saginaw, Mich., woman who has visited twice. "So, he was basically saying that he was 12."
The South Carolina Department of Corrections does not allow media to interview inmates in person.
Like Sisk, Strattard has a son of her own, and the boy she saw on television during his trial struck a chord that seems to still reverberate for Pittman's advocates.
"When I saw him sitting in that courtroom, I realized that could be my child or anyone's child," Strattard said. "There was just something about him, and it shocked me, and it wouldn't go away."
Those sentiments, combined with outrage that Pittman was held so long before his trial, have fueled supporters who hope that an appeal of the case to the state Supreme Court will succeed. In October, dozens of supporters and relatives gathered in Columbia as defense attorney Andy Vickery argued that his client's confession was influenced by Zoloft and his youth.
Lawyers say a decision on the appeal could come at any time.
"I've got my fingers crossed, and I'm hoping," said Pittman's father, Joe Pittman, who has traveled from Florida several times to visit the son who killed his own parents. "He's on my mind every day."
Christopher Pittman's mother has not been part of his life for years.
Through his office, prosecutor Barney Giese declined to comment on the case because the appeal is pending. During the trial, he reminded jurors of the brutality of the murders, describing how Pittman shot his grandfather in the mouth and his grandmother in the head and then told police they "deserved it."
Pittman supporters recently asked lawmakers to pass a measure requiring increased protections for juveniles taken into police custody in South Carolina. The measure does not appear to be gaining traction.
While he waits for a decision on the appeal, Pittman has a job on the prison maintenance crew. His supporters say he spends his time staying busy with that work, and with staying safe.
"I believe his grandparents would want us to give our love and compassion to their grandson and to fight for his freedom," Sisk said. "Those that really knew Joe and Joy Pittman and their kindness and love they had for their grandchildren, I'm sure, would agree."
