A group of Australian
schoolchildren working on a shoestring budget have recreated the HIV drug whose
price was controversially jacked up 5000% by a former hedge fund manager.
US company Turing
Pharmaceuticals' former chief Martin Shkreli became a global figure of hate
after buying the rights to Daraprim and then raising the price in the US from
$13.50 a tablet to $750.
Youngsters at a Sydney
school decided to draw attention to the scandal and went to work creating
pyrimethamine, the active ingredient for Daraprim, an anti-parasitic used to
treat people with low immunity , such as those with HIV , chemotherapy patients
and pregnant women.
Student James Wood said
he and his friends had started off with just $20 of the drug, and in one
reaction had produced thousands of dollars' worth. “So we really just hope this
makes a point about the nature of the pharmaceutical industry ,“ he told the
`Sydney Morning Herald'.University of Sydney research chemist Alice Williamson
helped the boys synthesise the medicine using an online platform Open Source
Malaria. The pupils “shared the outrage of the general public“, she said.
Turing Pharmaceuticals
continues to sell the only FDA-approved form of the drug in the US, but
reportedly cut the price in half for hospitals after the outcry . Daraprim,
which figures on the WHO list of essential medicines, is cheap in most
countries, with 50 tablets selling in Australia for $10.
Source: Times of India-3rd-December-2016
http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31804&articlexml=Oz-boys-make-expensive-HIV-drug-for-a-03122016019017
