Good evening, reader. As you may or may not have seen, all the newspapers today are reporting on the announcement by the drug company GlaxoSmithKline that they are starting a set of initiatives to help fight disease in the 50 poorest developing countries. Specifically, they have pledged to cap prices in these country at 25% of the UK price (which is cheep, but not as cheep as generic, non-branded drugs), to re-invest 20% of profits in these countries as aid and health care development, and to form a ‘patent pool’ to allow other companies and research bodies access to their patents for the development of drugs to aid the developing world (but this pool would not include HIV patents relating to HIV drugs, which is odd).
GSK has a bit of a tainted history, with a few things in their past to be ashamed of. For instance, they were one of the 39 pharmaceutical companies that attempted to sue South Africa top stop them importing genetic drugs, about which the CEO of GSK understatedly commented “I don’t think anybody can claim that was handled well”. They were also accused of covering up evidence that their antidepressant drug Paroxetine was addictive. They have recently been cutting down on research (as well as generally cutting jobs across the board); I’m not sure if that is related to their current proposals. Either way, I could imagine that clawing back a bit of good PR would be on the cards for GSK management. I also don’t rule out the possibility that Andrew Witty, who has only been CEO since May of last year, has a genuine desire to help the needy, and is willing to persuade his shareholders to take a hit in profits for the greater good.
I haven’t been able to find much out about this. The newspapers are reporting plenty, but I couldn’t find a GSK press release about it, and while Doctors Without Borders were called for comment some of the newspapers, their website doesn’t currently have anything on it. Likewise, I haven’t been able to find much in the way of reactions throughout the blogosphere yet. Thus, this post is just a brief prelude, without much in the way of analysis; I will try and get more information in the next few days, and put up a post with more on what is going on, and how it relates to the structure and function of the pharmaceutical industry in general.