THOUSAND OAKS : AIDS Activists to Protest at Amgen

AIDS activists from ACT-UP Los Angeles will demonstrate outside Amgen’s Thousand Oaks office at noon Wednesday to protest what they consider unreasonably high prices for the pharmaceutical firm’s drugs.

Amgen manufactures Neupogen, a protein that boosts the immune system by stimulating the body’s production of white blood cells after chemotherapy, company officials said. Both cancer and AIDS patients have used the drug to fight infection.

A 10-day treatment of Neupogen costs on average $1,350, ACT-UP activist David Lacaillade said. He called the price “appalling.”

Amgen officials confirmed that cost, but declined to comment on the rally or ACT-UP’s allegations of price-gouging.

For Wednesday’s lunchtime rally, ACT-UP plans a peaceful demonstration of several dozen activists on the sidewalk outside Amgen’s building on De Havilland Drive, Lacaillade said.

“This is only an opening salvo,” Lacaillade said. “We will keep our attention on Amgen and, if they don’t respond to the community, which includes ACT-UP, we’ll be back. We want to put them on notice that people are dying for their drug. They’re making a killing--literally.”

Amgen does offer a “safety net” program that helps patients who cannot afford Neupogen obtain free or reduced-cost treatment, Lacaillade said. But he criticized the program for requiring patients and their physicians to fill out extensive paperwork and said many doctors do not know about it.

In addition to demanding that Amgen lower its prices and streamline the safety net program, Lacaillade said ACT-UP will ask the firm to create a community price advisory board and to promise that any reduction in Neupogen’s cost in the United States not be offset by higher prices overseas.