The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has tussled with the drugmaker over its Viagra ads several times, is now telling Pfizer - and the rest of pharma - to use some restraint in pricing the latest rounds of AIDS meds. The FDA earlier this week approved Pfizer’s Selzentry, a CCR5 antagonist, a new type of AIDS drug. Merck hopes to win approval of such a med this fall.

The organization, which runs clinics and pharmacies, notedthat the wholesale price of Pfizer’s new drug is $10,585 per patient per year, or $29 per patient per day, while noting that Pfizer will make the Selzentry available through an expanded access program for patients with no insurance coverage or limited financial resources.

“We strongly urge Pfizer and the pharmaceutical industry as a whole to use restraint when pricing many of these new and promising AIDS drugs such as Pfizer’s Selzentry,” says Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, in a statement e-mailed to the media.

“While we are excited by the treatment possibilities this drug offers, we have serious concerns on the price of this drug, and we ask that it be priced fairly so that people in need of such lifesaving medicines may actually benefit from them…Pfizer is taking advantage of the hard work that advocates do to make sure that funding is available for ADAP (state programs) and Medicaid. Fair and equitable pricing of these drugs from the outset is one way to achieve this goal.”