30 years of HIV/AIDS in the U.S.

How much is the life of a person with HIV/AIDS worth? It’s not worth much to the big drug manufacturers, choking on the billions of dollars in profits made from the illness of others. It’s not even worth much if you live in the richest and most powerful country on the planet.

As of Sept. 1, more than 9,000 people living with HIV in the U.S. — who would normally have access to free HIV medication — have been placed on waiting lists for the government’s subsidized AIDS Drug Assistance Program for people with no insurance. (National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors) Two of the states with the longest waiting lists, Florida (4,022 people) and Louisiana (1,056 people), have some of the highest HIV death rates in the U.S. (Kaiser Family Foundation)

Some individuals who were receiving subsidized meds have actually been booted out of the program. In Virginia, 760 people were told to appeal to drug company charity programs, as they were being “transitioned” out of ADAP. (Washington Blade, Feb. 10) In Ohio, the financial eligibility requirement has been changed from 500 percent of the poverty level to 300 percent, resulting in 257 people being dropped from the program. (thebody.com, Sept. 23, 2010).

African Americans and Latinos/as represent 73 percent of all of those on these waiting lists — and have an HIV death rate 20 times that of whites (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Young gay and bisexual Black men are being infected at three times the annual numbers of young gay and bisexual white men, while African-American women are 20 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS than white women.

Drug corporations that could be saving people’s lives by giving away these medications are drowning in record profits. Annual reports of seven lead ing HIV pharmaceutical firms show that in just over three years (2006-2009), the seven leading manufacturers of HIV meds reaped $159 billion in profits. These are net pure profits — that is, what is left after all costs are accounted for, including research and development, taxes, investments, raw materials and wages. A mere $150 million would be enough to provide a year’s worth of HIV meds to those who need them in the U.S.

T he capitalist media constantly make false claims that drug companies must charge high prices to get back the money they have invested in making new drugs. But this allegation has been thoroughly debunked by Marcia Angell, senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (“The Truth About the Drug Companies,” 2004), as well as others. The government, through the National Institutes of Health, has provided untold millions of dollars in grants to initiate drug development since the 1980s.

Any money that may be invested by drug companies to make new medications comes from their profits, which are nothing more than wages gone unpaid to workers in the exploitation of their labor. Only workers create wealth, not the bosses and owners of the means of production.

I n the 30 years since the first AIDS cases were reported by the government, more than 600,000 people have died from this preventable disease in the U.S., and millions more globally. Only socialism, governed by true peoples’ representatives, can guarantee that in the future needless deaths will be averted by putting drug manufacturing in the hands of the people.

In socialist Cuba, HIV meds have been made available even though the U.S. blockade stopped the importation of HIV meds years ago. Today, Cuba manufactures its own HIV medications and distributes them free of charge to the people who need them. In the U.S., Merck, Pfizer and the other drug companies’ distributions are only in the form of profits to their stockholders.

The difference between capitalism and socialism for people living with HIV is a matter of life and death. From 1987, when the militant group Act-Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) began its fight for life against the silence of the government, to 2011 and beyond: Silence = Death! ­Capitalism = Death!