Unlike many other drugs that treat viruses, Sovaldi does not suppress hepatitis C, a virus that kills roughly 250,000 people around the world each year. It cures it.
“Normally you have a virus, and your body fights it off or your body fights it to a standstill and you just have it forever, basically, and hope it remains dormant more or less,” Laufer said. “The holy grail for every virologist is to find a way to drain the viral reservoir, and Sovaldi does this. You take one pill of Sovaldi a day for 12 weeks and then you don’t have hepatitis C anymore.”
The problem is that those pills are under patent, and they cost $1,000 per pill.
“Literally, if you have $84,000 then hepatitis C is not your problem anymore,” Laufer said. “But given that there are other methodologies for managing hepatitis C that are not curing it and that are cheaper, insurance typically will not cover [Sovaldi]. And so we’ve got this incredible technology and it’s sitting on the shelf except for people who are ridiculously wealthy.”
So Four Thieves Vinegar Collective set out to teach people how to make their own version of Sovaldi. Chemists at the collective thought the DIY version would cost about $300 for the entire course of medication, or about $3.57 per pill. But they were wrong.
“It’s actually just a little under $70 (83 cents per pill), which just kind of blew my mind when they finally showed me the results,” Laufer said. “I was like, can we do the math here again?”
So, the laws should be changed and every pharma exec, board members and so on who prices like this should be locked up for life.
Next, all laws need to be changed to end the doctrine that only profit maximization for shareholders matters.
Third, pharma needs to move a bounty system. According to WHO there are 58 million people with Hep C around the world. Put up a bounty of 1,000 times that: 58 billion, for a cure, minus the cost per cure. Research costs can also be added to the bounty, once the cure is certified, not before. A consortium of rich governments can create the bounty funds, with poorer countries allowed in for free. A UN org reporting only to the general assembly should probably administer it.
Fourth, end pharma patents. All of them. All information, including manufacturing information is shared.
Fifth: for all palliatives, profits must be capped at 5% max.
Sixth: move most research to government and non-profits. Real non-profits, none of the Chat-GPT nonsense.
Seventh: remove further monetary incentives to just research forever: everyone involved is capped at a salary of 2xmedian income in the G-20 or something similar. You want the big pay off? You have to actually cure the disease.
Eighth: Force scientists and technicians to be “in on the bounty.” Some sort of fairly even split between people who worked on the cure.
There are other actions which should be taken, but these are the basics. Right now we aren’t curing people we can, and companies prefer palliatives to cures because they can charge until the person dies. We need to emphasize cures and make sure no one gets rich selling palliatives.
In the meantime the right to make your own medicines needs to be 100% legal and supported.