"We all have AIDS”: Case for reducing the cost of HIV drugs to zero

An editorial last year in the Washington Post challenged directors of drug companies to reduce the cost of HIV drugs in poor countries to zero. Here the reproduced editorial is accompanied by a discussion about why it was written and the response to it. We invited comment from one of the named directors and from a man with AIDS who refuses to take antiretroviral drugs until they are available to the public sector in South Africa. Last year I wrote a guest editorial for the Washington Post in which I challenged the world's pharmaceutical companies to cut the cost of HIV drugs to zero in poor countries (see box on next page). Here I explain why I wrote it and describe some of the responses it provoked. PMC ID: PMC1122133 (January 26, 2002)