The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) took out an ad in today’s Wall Street Journal blasting Gilead and “our state and federal leaders,” whom the coalition charges with “breaking the bank by paying whatever Gilead and its pharma allies demand without question.”
The half-page, four-color ad was slated to run in WSJ editions in Northern California and the Washington/Maryland/Virginia markets, AHF said, coinciding with Gilead’s Annual General Meeting in Millbrae, CA.
The headline of the ad reads:
IF YOU THINK $1,000 A PILL IS OK STOP READING THIS.
The nonprofit AIDS organization has been a frequent critic of drug pricing and has been vocal before.
In January, the group’s leader—Michael Weinstein—also referred to Gilead’s HIV prevention treatment, Truvada, as a “party drug,” amid reports from the New York Times about the drug’s stigma in the gay community.
And in 2007 the group went so far as to file a suit with Pfizer over its DTC campaign for ED drug Viagra. AHF accused Pfizer of promoting recreational use of Viagra and suggested a link between the drug and illicit methamphetamine use. A Pfizer spokesperson at the time denied the claims and added that AHF had approached the company, “with a multimillion-dollar funding request for a crystal meth educational program.”
