The meeting ended with a demand to meet with Nicholas Teti, DuPont Pharmaceuticals' president, but arrangements for the encounter broke down as DuPont rapidly moved toward launching its new product. Community action on pricing is, if anything, long overdue. Despite sporadic protests from individual groups, the community has not taken coordinated action against unfair pricing for several years. The effort around efavirenz should provide the impetus for people with HIV, activists and AIDS service organizations to confront the exceptionally high cost of antiviral therapy. The prices established in the U.S. have an enormous worldwide impact.
Unaffordable drugs are essentially ineffective, no matter how good they look in clinical trials.
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