Coronavirus: AHF Thanks Members of Congress who say ‘No’ to Exclusive Patent Rights for Vaccine

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) welcomed a letter signed by 46 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives asking the Trump Administration to make a potential vaccine against the coronavirus disease accessible, affordable and available.

AHF strongly agrees with this reasonable request as stated in the letter sent to President Trump on February 20.

“With the U.S. taxpayer bearing virtually the entire $700 million burden spent so far to develop a cure and a vaccine to this dire threat to public health, no drug company should benefit by getting an exclusive monopoly license to charge whatever they want for it,” said Michael Weinstein, president of AHF. “In fact, the lack of serious investment from these greedy companies gives lie to their empty talking points that they need to charge obscene prices and rake in sky high profits to come up with the next cure.”

“While AHF thanks these members of Congress for this statement, the drug industry has been thanking the generosity of the U.S. taxpayer by charging them the highest prices for medicine in the world. That drug companies spend more on advertising, marketing, stock buy backs and CEO salaries than they do on research and development is well known,” said Weinstein.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 1.3 million people in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare.