Another blow to HIV research today from a Nader-esque consumer group trying to use an obscure law to sell generic versions of patented drugs. The Consumer Project on Technology has set up a non-profit company and plans to sell Zerit, one arm of an anti-HIV cocktail for ten percent of the price that Bristol-Myers now charges. According to the New York Times, “a provision in the [1980] Bayh-Dole Act allows the government to require a company selling a drug developed with government-sponsored research to grant a license to another party if it is shown that the drug company is not making the invention available to the public on “reasonable terms.”” Love that phrase “reasonable terms.” Presumably it means as long as the company doesn’t make enough profit to invest in future research. ACT-UP, of course, are behind this bid to cripple the incentives for future HIV research. Much of what’s left of AIDS activism is dominated by Luddite leftists, who haven’t seen a drug company they don’t want to scream at. Well, they’ll soon have their way. Which means that the next generation of people with HIV will have nothing to fall back on when they really need it.
BELLY OF THE BEAST: Had my interview with Howie Kurtz today. I kind of wish I could do this real time profile-of-a-profile experiment with someone else. Howie’s pretty much a gent, and he works hard. I gave him some names of friends whom he has already called. One of my closest, whom I referred to as my “virtual husband,” had to assure Howie that we weren’t actually lovers. That’s a relief. I think Howie is trying to figure out how I fit into Washington. With pleasant difficulty, I’d say. He came to a lunch panel at Cato, where I joined Debra Dickerson, a friend who now writes for the Washington Post, and Terry Teachout, a sharp cultural critic from the right. An interesting and cordial debate on whether America is now two nations, although I could feel some hardliners in the audience bristle at my notion that the culture war paradigm is shifting. Then we had a late lunch at a local trendy faux-diner (you can buy a Chardonnay with your meatloaf) and chatted pleasantly enough over a chicken pot-pie that somehow lost its pot. I promised Howie I wouldn’t give away any anecdotes but I predict he’ll use an early, steamy encounter with actress Elizabeth Shue, my gym obsession, my confession that I was a terrible manager at TNR, and my post-English love affair with America. Unlike Michael Wolff, Kurtz actually reads and thinks a lot. He also makes me feel unproductive. So I feel sure there’ll be plenty of fair criticism and analysis in the piece among other things. Oh, and I brought him back to my apartment at his request, and showed him how I update the site and stuff like that. He may mention the chapel I set up for periodic 5 minute prayer-retreats. But at least he didn’t snoop in my bathroom like Marjorie Williams did for her hatchet-job in Vanity Fair a few years ago.
The Dish 