Students Protest Pfizer on World AIDS Day

As many undergraduates wore red ribbons to commemorate World AIDS Day Friday, a group of students joined about 100 protesters in a demonstration against a pharmaceutical company's patent on one of the most effective AIDS drugs on the market.

The rally targeted the local offices of Pfizer, the world's largest drug company.

About 30 Harvard students first gathered at the ARCO Forum at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Friday afternoon and listened to short speeches from the leaders of the rally.

"We have an opportunity today to challenge the corporate oppression of Pfizer," said Adam Taylor, a KSG student who organized the rally. "We can use consumer action to change the course of this disease worldwide."

Pfizer makes a life-saving drug called fluconazole, which treats two AIDS-related opportunistic diseases--a painful and deadly brain infection called cryptoccal meningitis and another potentially fatal disease called esophageal candidiasis.

Health experts estimate that 10 percent of 34.5 million AIDS sufferers worldwide will die of these diseases.

But protesters said that Pfizer charges unfairly high prices for this drug, which costs $12.20 per pill wholesale in the United States and up to $20.75 on the private market in South Africa. In contrast, in countries like Thailand where generic versions are legal, the drug costs only 24 cents per pill, organizers said.

Pfizer officials could not be reached for comment.

But officials have said they charge high prices to make up for research and development costs. On the Pfizer web site, a series of company statements argue that at least 80 percent of a price increase can be attributed to increased consumption and the costs associated with new treatments. And they note that many of their drugs, particularly antidepressants, decline in value from their launch prices. Finally, they argue that country-to-country comparisons of prices are far to simple to be valid measurements of cost and value.

The protesters respond that research and development is actually publicly subsidized and the high prices compensate for advertisements and marketing.

"The intellectual property system in the U.S. gives discoveries to pharmaceutical companies to patent them...it's public risk for private gain," said Sheldon Krimsky, a doctor at Tufts University.

"To me, AIDS represents worldwide inequality that is played out in the health sector more than anywhere else," Taylor said.

Kennedy School student G. Imani Duncan said the protest was "an issue about morality, or lack thereof."

Harvard students in particular should protest, Taylor said, because the University owns about millions of dollars of Pfizer stock.

"Harvard is not a neutral, innocent player in this," Taylor said. "We can use shareholder activism to change corporate policy."

At Pfizer's Discovery Technology Center at 620 Memorial Dr. near the Boston University Bridge, Harvard students joined student protesters from Boston University and MIT as well as members of Boston's Global Action Network (BGAN).

The demonstrators carried signs denouncing Pfizer's "corporate greed" and chanted "Hey, hey, ho, ho Pfizer's greed has got to go!"

Brook K. Baker, head of BGAN's Africa AIDS Project, acknowledges that Pfizer donated about two years worth of drugs to South Africa on Friday, but still criticized the company.

"It's a free donation program with onerous limitations," Baker said. "It is for two years only, and extended to only about 100,000 people instead of the other 20 million, 15 to 20 percent of whom will die by diseases controlled by this medicine. Pfizer should not receive praise today--it should receive condemnation."

About halfway through the protest, BGAN delivered a letter of demands to a Pfizer vice president, including demands to drop the prices of the drug and to relinquish the patent.

At sunset, the tone of the protest shifted to honor the victims of AIDS in a candlelight vigil. Strains of "Amazing Grace" filled the air as protesters took a moment of prayer and silence to commemorate the dead.

"I'm here today because of the millions of people dying of who don't have to be dying," Jane H. Martin '01 said.

Harvard Medical School student Maya Balakrishnan said the protest succeeded in raising public awareness about the issue.

And Taylor also said the protest was effective in many respects.

"We delivered a letter to Pfizer, had 100 people protest on a cold day, experienced the power of prayer, and now we are seeing more of a groundswell on this issue than ever before," he said.