AIDS Activists Decry Cost of Drug at Amgen Offices : Thousand Oaks: Protest targets Neupogen, which boosts immune system. Employees say price cuts would curtail research.
Three dozen AIDS activists, blowing ear-piercing whistles and screaming bitter slogans, circled Amgen’s Thousand Oaks headquarters Wednesday to protest what they term the unreasonably high cost of a drug the pharmaceutical company manufactures.
Waving placards depicting a greedy doctor stuffing his bag with dollars, demonstrators of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) from Los Angeles and Ventura counties chanted, “Amgen, Amgen, you can’t hide. We charge you with Am-genocide!”
Company officials had no comment beyond a short statement affirming the company’s commitment to “providing all patients with high-quality, cost-effective human therapeutics that meet important health care needs.”
Neupogen, the drug forced into the spotlight in Wednesday’s noontime rally, boosts the immune system by stimulating the body’s production of white blood cells.
The federal Food and Drug Administration has approved Neupogen only for cancer patients recovering from chemotherapy. But increasingly, acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients who have undergone chemotherapy are demanding the drug, which costs about $1,350 for a standard 10-day treatment.
Neupogen’s price tag includes a profit of roughly 80%--standard for prescription drugs produced by biotechnology firms, according to Brandon Fradd, an industry analyst with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco.
Amgen recorded $357.6 million in profits in 1992. Talk of nine-figure profits and 80% markups incensed activists like Stephanie Boggs of Los Angeles, who blasted Amgen as an “AIDS profiteer.”
“We’re not here just because we want to pick on the pharmaceutical companies,” said AIDS patient Sal Fuentes of Ventura. “There’s a reason, and that reason is that people are dying and the companies profit.”
Amgen’s financial outlook is not entirely rosy, however.
Lower than expected sales of Neupogen recently prompted analysts to scale back earnings estimates for the first quarter of 1993. Amgen’s stock price plummeted after the announcement, dropping from $46.25 to $37 last Thursday and hovering around there this week.
Amid the hullabaloo of Wednesday’s protest, several Amgen employees quietly suggested that the activists might actually be shooting themselves in the foot.
Forcing Amgen to lower prices would cut the company’s revenues and therefore curtail research on other drugs, they argued. Amgen devoted 17% of its revenues, or $182 million, to research in 1992 and plans to double that figure this year, spokeswoman Sarah Crampton said.
“We couldn’t do our research without the sales of Neupogen,” said a woman who has worked in Amgen’s research department for two years. “I don’t see us spending extra money on useless things.”
Another Amgen researcher, who also requested anonymity, called Neupogen a “bargain” because the drug battles infection and thus reduces costly hospital stays.
Furthermore, Amgen boosters noted that the company offers a so-called Safety Net Program that provides Neupogen free of charge for some uninsured or low-income patients.
But officials of the firm would not release statistics on the number of AIDS patients who have received free treatment, and protesters derided the program as a small-scale, public-relations measure.
As fellow activists cheered, David Lacaillade called for the company to slash the cost of Neupogen, expand its Safety Net Program, create a community advisory board and promise not to raise prices overseas.
Although Amgen’s spacious headquarters on DeHavilland Drive was quiet during the hourlong rally, with only a few employees poking their heads out windows to watch, ACT-UP demonstrators said they were certain they would get results.
“We’ll be back,” several shouted as they left the area, hinting that their next action could include the civil disobedience tactics that have earned ACT-UP a reputation for aggressive confrontation.
The group’s scrappy campaign against British pharmaceutical giant Burroughs Wellcome Co.--including a dramatic protest in 1989 during which seven activists chained themselves to a railing at the New York Stock Exchange--succeeded in driving down the price of the antiviral drug AZT.
But several Amgen employees said they doubted such tactics would work in Thousand Oaks.
Analyst Fradd agreed. “They could lower prices if they wanted to,” he said. “But most (drug companies) don’t want to. I suspect this kind of pressuring won’t have much influence.”
