Pharmaceutical CEO Says Poor People Don’t Deserve Cancer Treatment?

By Nigel Boys
The cancer treatment drug Nexavar is being marketed by the German based pharmaceutical company Bayer. It has been developed for the affluent people around the world and is not intended to be used by poor people who cannot afford to pay for it, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a global medical charity.
After several years of testing, Nexavar was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2005 and since then Bayer have been making huge profits from marketing the life saving medicine.

Marijn Dekkers, Bayer’s CEO, reportedly claimed in recent comments that Nexavar was not made with the intention of giving it out freely to the poor people of the world and was developed with the aim of selling it to those who could afford to buy it and not for Indians.
However, because the huge cost of buying the much needed medication was not within the grasp of most of the poor population, India licensed a local drug-maker to produce a generic copy of Nexavar in 2012, a move which angered the CEO Bayer whomany perceive as greedy.
Amazingly, the Indian generic version of Nexavar, made Natco Pharma Ltd. of India, only costs a fraction of the price when compared to the German pharmaceutical’s drug and is within the reach of many of the country’s population. The Indian pharmaceutical company is selling their version for about $177 which is about a 97% discount on the Bayer drug.

Dekkers also claimed, in December, that the grant for Natco Pharma to reproduce a generic version of their drug was nothing more than theft. However, after his comments were widely published in the media, he made another statement to try and quell the immediate response of people to his lack of concern for Indians suffering from cancer.
The German CEO added that his initial response to the Indian generic version of Nexavar had been anger. He added that he wanted all people of the world to benefit from this breakthrough in the treatment of cancer.
However, Manica Balasegaram, executive director of MSF said that Bayer’s remarks prove what is wrong with the pharmaceutical industry. She added “Bayer is effectively admitting the drugs they develop are deliberately going to be rationed to the wealthiest patients.”
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq3S98_m5Fk