Letter: UNC needs to fight for cheaper drugs

TO THE EDITOR:

By now, you have seen the story all over social media. You have heard the condemnations of greed and opportunism. You have heard people writing off an industry as corrupt and prioritizing profits over people.

I am referring to the recent news story involving Martin Shkreli, chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals and former hedge fund manager. His company bought the rights to the drug Daraprim and raised the price from $13.50 per pill to $750. Daraprim is used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that poses severe health risk to people with AIDS and pregnant women, among others.

With Daraprim — as with most medicines — if people can’t afford it, they go without it, facing complications and sometimes death. The burden of forgoing treatment because it is too expensive falls overwhelmingly on vulnerable populations.

I am calling upon my fellow Carolina community members to do more in the name of access to medicines that save lives. Talk is cheap. Medicines are not.

Pricing decisions feel like they take place in a faraway boardroom. In reality, however, university students and faculty can take action to impact the affordability of medicines. Furthermore, it’s imperative that we take such action.

The process of developing a new drug takes place in our own backyard. Nearly one-fourth of drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration start in university labs. Universities then license private companies to further develop and distribute the drug, typically giving them a monopoly.

If a company can charge whatever they want for a medicine, the price is generally outside the realm of affordability for the average citizen of countries like Malawi or the Philippines.

By changing a university’s licensing process, you can change the accessibility of medicines in low and middle-income countries.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we have a long way to go. Earlier this year, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines reviewed UNC.

This international student advocacy group seeks to improve access to medicines in resource-limited countries and to increase research for treating neglected diseases. UAEM gave UNC a grade as part of the University Report Card on Global Equity and Biomedical Research.

For the report card, the organization assessed a university’s investment in innovative research for neglected diseases and how their licensing practices ensured equitable access for people in low- and middle-income countries.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received a C plus. We are an esteemed university with one of the best schools of public health in the country. Our university community enshrines justice and equity as core values. We can do better.

In good news, this report card is like any other; we have the chance to earn a higher grade next year.

We must urge our university to change its licensing framework. While the Office of Technology Development has committed to the principle of global access, it has not disclosed any details regarding how our licensing procedure allows drugs developed at UNC to be affordable in resource-limited countries.

Last year, only 16.33 percent of licenses issued by UNC for new drug compounds were nonexclusive. As a point of comparison, 89.74 percent of licenses to come out of Johns Hopkins were nonexclusive.

When a company holds an exclusive license, they effectively have a monopoly. Generic competition lowers the price of the drug in that country. And if you live on fewer than $2 per day, as close to a third of the world’s population does, a lower price for a medicine is a question of life or death.

We must make our licensing process more transparent and the language more explicit to allow for generic competition in low- and middle-income countries.

This change will demonstrate Carolina’s commitment to global health equity and keep us comparable to our peer institutions. And it will save lives. We can do better than a C plus.

Aly Bancroft

Graduate Student

School of Public Health