Drug giant’s secret plan to destroy cancer medicine
Company staff discussed dumping life-saving stock unless 4,000% price rise agreed
Staff at one of the world’s leading drug companies discussed destroying supplies of life-saving cancer medicines in a battle to impose massive price rises across Europe, The Times can reveal.
The proposal was raised at Aspen Pharmacare during a dispute with the Spanish health service in 2014 over attempts to increase the price of the medicines by up to 4,000 per cent.
The company, which runs its European operations from Dublin, began a continent-wide effort to drive up the price of five cancer medicines after buying the rights from the British company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
The price rises meant that the cost of busulfan, used by leukaemia patients, rose from £5.20 to £65.22 a pack in England and Wales during 2013, an increase of more than 1,100 per cent. The price of chlorambucil, also used to treat blood cancer, rose from £8.36 to £40.51 a pack in the same year.
Aspen, a South African pharmaceutical company, bought the marketing rights to the “Cosmos” portfolio of oncology drugs from GSK in 2009 as part of a £273 million deal. GSK received a 16 per cent stake in the company in the agreement, which it has since sold for about $2.2 billion (£1.7 billion).
The Cosmos drugs that Aspen bought were long out of patent but had no competition from other manufacturers. They included mercaptopurine, a treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, which occurs in children, and medicines for several types of cancer particularly prevalent among the elderly. There were limited alternative therapies for several of the drugs.
The price rises in England and Wales were possible because Aspen exploited a loophole that means companies are free to impose rises if an existing brand name is dropped. Branded medicines are subject to strict price controls, but the Department of Health does not limit the price of unbranded generics.