Retrovir

Retrovir

By 1987 38,000 people contracted AIDS throughout 85 countries and ATZ was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (AIDS Timeline, n.d.). AZT was originally developed in 1964 by the Burroughs Wellcome Company as an anticancer drug, but was never approved (AZT Facts, n.d.). The Burroughs Wellcome Company owned the rights to the drug and reexamined it as part of a nationwide search for an antiviral drug that might be effective in the fight against the AIDS virus. AZT was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in twenty months because of humanitarian reasons as opposed to the eight to ten years that it typically takes to get a drug approved (AZT Facts, n.d.). Thousands of AIDS patients continued to die as a result of the side effects of the disease.

During the first decade of the two thousands, the world would see the death toll from AIDS continue to decline however the number of AIDS cases continued to increase. ATZ was found to mitigate the passage of AIDS from mothers to new born infants. The cost of AIDS drugs continued to decrease to an affordable level and total spending on AIDS drugs and education was at an all time high around the world (AIDS Timeline, n.d.).

There are approximately 37,000 new AIDS cases diagnosed and 112,560 deaths resulting from the complications of AIDS in the United States annually (World Health Organization, n.d.). One in every five people living with HIV has not been diagnosed with the HIV infection, nor has it been reported (United States HIV & AIDS, n.d.).

Burroughs Wellcome Company: Retrovir

Summary and Recommendation:

As I have read the case it was presented that in January of 1990, Burroughs Wellcome executives were under continued pressure to reduce the price of Retrovir, a drug which had been found to be effective in the treatment of acquired immune deficiency syndrom (AIDS) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).   After careful review of the data and the case I have come up with the...