Abbott Acts Up: Suing An AIDS Group
3 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 18th, 2007 // 7:13 am
Once again, the drugmaker is playing hardball in a way that imperils not only its own image, but that of the entire pharmaceutical industry. This time, Abbott has filed a lawsuit against Act Up-Paris because the activist group protested the company’s patent row with Thailand by organizing an attack on Abbott’s web site. Act-Up Paris faces a fine up to $100,000 if it loses the suit and could be disbanded.
In April, hundreds of AIDS activists from France, the US and other countries clicked on a post on Act Up-Paris’s web site and overloaded Abbott’s server. Act-Up says the attack lasted four hours and disabled Abbott’s site for about 30 minutes on the eve of its annual shareholder meeting, although Abbott claims it lasted longer. The drugmaker filed its lawsuit in May, and activists late last week began circulating e-mails decrying the move.
Abbott called its suit “a principled action,” justified by a cyber attack that interrupted some of its business activities, such as the sale of nutritional products online, The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required). Abbott claims the group violated the French penal code.
“We respect the right to protest and, while our organizations can disagree on various matters, it is important to convey those disagreements in a respectful, appropriate and lawful manner,” Abbott spokesman Scott Stoffel tells the Journal. The company declined to further explain its public-relations strategy in breaking with the industry norm of trying to work with AIDS activists.
Most likely, Abbott doesn’t have a public relations strategy. The drugmaker continually makes decisions seemingly without regard to appearance. Intoxicated with the notion that playing hardball will send messages to opponents, Abbott repeatedly undermines big pharma’s effort to portray itself as caring about patients. Filing such a lawsuit against people who clamor for AIDS drugs, in fact, sends the opposite message. In this case, a drugmaker is acting up.
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Jérôme Martin
You will find below Act Up-Paris’ press release on the lawsuit :
http://www.actupparis.org/article3019.html
Please consider that the problem for People Living With Aids is not Abbott’s PR strategy. The problem is Abbott depriving patients in Thailand of new drugs just because the governement used its right to issue compulsory licenses to treat more PLWAs with cheaper drugs. Abbott’s decision is a sentence to death for patients in therapeutic failure in Thailand. As a PLWAs, we cannot accept that.
Best
Jerome Martin
Act Up-Paris
JS
It really is interesting how Abbott has the best selling and by some standards one of the most expensive HIV drugs on the market. Kaletra along with Norvir have been a gold mine for them and very useful for patients so it is just freaking incredible they would even give press to this let alone sue an AIDS group. I guess we now know what many of us already thought patients are just a bucket of money to them…
Denis Cheney
É para todos vermos de quem depende a saúde de milhões de seropositivos entre outras doenças. Se é nas mãos de empresas como ABBOT como posso confiar nelas? 1º tenho de fazer contas e saber se minha cura é rentável para eles. Mas e se tratar “eternamente” for mais rentável para eles?
Por essas e por outras é que não toco em mais nenhum retroviral nem lhes dou mais um tusto enquanto puder e tiver escolha.
E se querem saber por mim estou óptimo e já não sinto dependente de ABBOT ou ROCHE como maioria dos seropositivos e paÃses.
Eles podem monopolizar e distorcer a investigação e informação mas quem procura encontra!
Boa sorte para a Tailandia pois é realmente um acto bárbaro. Atentem bem ao que está a acontecer. Cria-se uma dependência e ganha-se o poder. Se vivessem na Tailândia qual seria a vantagem de estarem dependentes de ABBOT e CIAs? Portugal na sua subserviência é claro que nunca fará o mesmo que Brasil ou Tailandia mas também tem cidadãos mais ricos que podem pagar 500 e mais euros por caisa de retroviral.
Estamos entregues a quem???