By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, October 30, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03
A small group of activists, charging that a Japanese pharmaceutical company is slow to develop an experimental drug for treatment of a cancer associated with AIDS, staged a sit-in at the firm’s U.S. headquarters in Fort Lee on Tuesday.
Bob LaChance of Treatment Action Guerrillas said Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. determined in laboratory tests on animals about two years ago that a compound developed from a bacteria could halt the growth of blood vessels, and could be effective in treating Kaposi’s sarcoma and some forms of breast cancer. Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer that strikes one in 10 AIDS patients, is a proliferation of blood vessels.
Several companies, including Daiichi, are developing experimental drugs to halt the development of these blood vessels. Daiichi’s high molecular weight sugar compound, known to AIDS researchers and activists as SP-PG, is the first known experimental drug that could halt the formation of the purple tumors of Kaposi’s sarcoma in animals.
“They’ve been dragging their feet developing the drug because they are putting corporate profits over people’s lives,” LaChance said. “They want to make sure there’s a market for this drug before they develop it. They are not concerned about people affected by Kaposi’s sarcoma who are dying by the thousands.”
Thomas Boersig, special consultant to the board of Daiichi, told the activists Tuesday it would be premature to bring the drug to the market.
“Some very basic studies have been done in the laboratory on this compound of ours,” Boersig said. “This is a drug that is still in research. When we talk about development, we are talking about studying the product in man, and we have not done that study yet.”
The discussion was tense but peaceful. But protester Bob Rafsky, a 46-year-old Brooklyn man who said he has been HIV-positive for four years, became angry.
“See this dark mark on my forehead? That’s Kaposi’s sarcoma. It’s going to spread. It’s going to kill me. . . . You are my murderer, in your shirt and tie,” he said.
Boersig said it is not lost on him that people continue to die during the search for an effective drug for Kaposi’s sarcoma. Daiichi, he said, is in a race with other companies to develop an effective drug.
LaChance said he lost his lover of 20 years to Kaposi’s sarcoma five months ago.
The 16 activists, 10 of whom sat in a circle, their wrists inserted in plastic tubes and tied with nylon twine, took over the reception area of the company’s ninth-floor offices at 400 Kelby St.
Caption: PHOTO – JOHN DECKER / THE RECORD – Demonstrators in the offices of Daiichi Pharmaceutical talking with a company consultant, Thomas Boersig.
ID: 17359489 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)
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