One of the nation’s highest-profile LGBT advocacy organizations has joined the calls for Congress to investigate Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company that recently sparked a national backlash when it proposed hiking the price of a critical anti-infection drug.
On Wednesday, The Huffington Post has learned, the Human Rights Campaign sent letters to the chairmen of three key House committees with jurisdiction over health care and the drug industry. In the letters, the organization calls upon the committees to investigate Turing’s recent announcement that it would raise the price of drug called Daraprim, a treatment for toxoplasmosis, from $13.50 to $750 a tablet. Turing has since withdrawn the announcement, although it reportedly still plans to sell Daraprim at a higher price than the current one.
Toxoplasmosis comes from a common foodborne parasite that affects people with compromised immune systems, such as cancer patients receiving chemotherapy and people with HIV. Daraprim is the “standard of care” for toxoplasmosis, meaning that it is the drug experts consider most effective. There is no generic alternative.
Only 2,000 Americans take Daraprim each year, but for those 2,000, the drug can literally mean the difference between life and death. And a price hike like what Turing suggested, as first reported at the health care website Healio, would threaten to put the drug out of reach for some of these people.
The announcement generated widespread rebuke, particularly after Martin Shkreli, the company's 32-year-old chief executive officer, brashly defended the decision on Twitter -- at one point calling a journalist questioning the decision a “moron.” Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders blasted the company, and even Donald Trump got in on the action, calling the proposed price hike “disgusting” and “a disgrace” and suggesting that Shkreli was a “spoiled brat.”
Now, the Human Rights Campaign wants Congress to conduct a formal investigation. “The burden of this unjustified and unprecedented cost will undoubtedly be shouldered by the most vulnerable members of our community -- including people living with HIV and pregnant women,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement. “A thorough investigation is needed to ensure that irresponsible companies like Turing Pharmaceuticals are not preventing vulnerable patients from getting access to lifesaving medications.”
In response to the backlash, Turing announced that it would be seeking to market Daraprim at a lower price than the proposed $750 per tablet. The company has not yet specified what that new price will be.
In interviews, Shkreli has defended the decision to raise the price of Daraprim, saying that the move would generate the kind of "reasonable profit" necessary to make the drug's manufacture worthwhile to his company. Turing, meanwhile, has vowed to work with individual institutions and patients in order to make sure people who need the drug can get it.
“We are committed to ensuring easy and affordable access to this important treatment, and our commitment extends to improving the care and treatment of patients who are diagnosed with toxoplasmosis, a very rare disorder,” the company said in a statement earlier this week. (Efforts to reach a company spokesman by email on Thursday were not successful.)
The Human Rights Campaign isn’t the first to seek congressional investigation of Turing. Earlier this week, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) formally requested that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hold hearings. But Cummings and the Democrats are in the minority. It’s up to the chairmen of those committees, who are members of the Republican majority, to make that decision.