By Mia De Graaf Health Editor For Dailymail.com
Published: 22:57 BST, 16 May 2019 | Updated: 22:57 BST, 16 May 2019
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led a grilling of a pharmaceutical CEO over the $2,000 price tag on an HIV-prevention drug which costs less than $10 in other markets.
Truvada, which reduces the risk of contracting HIV by 99 percent, costs $1,780 a month in the US, $8 in Australia, and $6 in South Africa.
Experts say that the US could end HIV transmissions by 2030 if 1million more Americans were taking the drug, known colloquially as PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis).
But the price has made it inaccessible to many, leading to thousands more HIV diagnoses in the past four years alone - as Gilead rakes in $3 billion a year in revenue.
At a committee hearing on Thursday, Rep Ocasio-Cortez demanded Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day to explain why they would not lower the price.
Ocasio-Cortez asked why the drug would be so expensive since it was developed by research funded by the US taxpayer
'There's no reason this should be $2,000 a month. People are dying because of it and there's no enforceable reason for it,' Ocasio-Cortez said.
O'Day responded that Truvada is patent-protected in the US, unlike in the rest of the world.
Generics will be available when the drug comes off-patent in September 2020, at which point Gilead has allowed an Israeli company, Teva, permission to make a competitive drug.
However, activists say one competitor is not enough to reduce the price significantly.
What's more, in recent months it emerged the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does hold patents on PrEP, a drug which was developed by US taxpayer-funded research, to the tune of roughly $50 million.
