Students protest at drug company's actions

Law students at Yale University in the United States have formed a pressure group after the institution licensed exclusive production of an AIDS drug to a pharmaceuticals firm for $40m (£28.5m) a year, reported Julian Borger in a recent article in the Guardian.

Yale holds the patent for the drug d4T, an antiretroviral also known as stavudine, which was invented by Professor William Prusoff, a member of the university's academic staff. The antiHIV drug is manufactured under the brand name Zerit by Bristol-Myers Squibb, the pharmaceutical giant, which is paying $40m in royalties each year to the university for the exclusive manufacturing licence. Zerit is sold at a price unaffordable to developing countries where AIDS and HIV are endemic.

Like other American universities, Yale is faced with the problems of maintaining academic integrity while at the same time satisfying large corporate sponsors and donors, of which Bristol-Myers is one, says the Guardian.

The students have set up the Yale AIDS Action Coalition in order to shame the university and pressurise it into taking greater responsibility for the social consequences of licensing out inventions for profit. They argue that the university should have more of a conscience and is in fact breaking its own policy on patent licensing. The policy guidelines, originally published in 1998, state that the university seeks to pursue "the benefit of society in general" and to have licensing agreements to "protect against failure of the licensee to carry out effective development and marketing within a specified time period."

The action group is angered by the failure of the university to allow stavudine to be manufactured generically and so brought into the price range of the developing countries that most need it, such as the sub-Saharan African states. An Indian drug manufacturer has only recently offered to manufacture the drug and sell it at a fraction of the cost of Zerit as manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Yale argues that, although it is the patent holder, it is helpless to respond to manufacturing requests as it has handed over all rights to grant production permission in the licence agreement with Bristol-Myers. The university also refuses to publish the details of the agreement, further angering the students.

The student group accuses the university of not doing enough to solve the problem. The group has allied with Médecins Sans Frontières, which is already directing a campaign to get pharmaceutical companies to allow generic production of AIDS drugs. Professor Prusoff is also backing the students, despite receiving a proportion of Yale's licence royalties.

Navin Chohan, London


studentBMJ 2001;09:129-170 May ISSN 0966-6494