Burroughs Wellcome Case Analysis Essay

The disease known as AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, is the final stage of HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, which causes an exceptional amount of damage to the immune system. Certain white blood cells known as lymphocytes are destroyed, resulting in loss of the body's ability to protect itself against disease. Victims undergo an increased susceptibility to infections, various types of cancers, and neurological disorders. The origins and widespread epidemic of AIDS occurred from the 1970s to 1990s in the United States. There are a number of factors that may have contributed to the sudden spread including widespread drug use, the blood industry, and international travel. The 1970s saw an increase in the availability of heroin

designed to fight AIDS in Africa and Asia, with a target of treating 3,000 to 6,000 AIDS

This deal with addressing the community, family and social networks that people are part of. Nurses should in this case analyze the different social environments that people live in so as to successfully address the AIDs pandemic. This is mainly due to the fact that people may tend to form their attitudes towards the disease depending on their social network. Nurses should form groups, and educate the people as a community, about the effects of the disease on both the community and family, an undertaking which will raise awareness among the community members. This is likely to help the community to be cautious and responsible for their actions, as well as prevent the promotion of any negative values that may increase chances of people in the society acquiring the disease (Levine & What Works Working Group, 2007). Additionally, nursing should address the issue of stigma that family and social networks have towards the AIDs pandemic and those suffering from it, and which hinder people from seeking help and knowing their status (Qubuda & Mphumela, 2009).

In the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” FRONTLINE examines the outbreak of AIDS since its first diagnosed case in 1981. The film investigates different medical, political and social environments under AIDS pandemic in the US and worldwide. The film not only focuses on the scientific research and progress in treating the disease, it also looks at the social stigma, government strategies and public campaigns around different countries.

In the Radio Lab the Authors illustrates how HIV is spreading in United States and how the starting point begins as Patient Zero. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich along with Carl Zimmer and David Quammen discuss how in 1981 a mysterious syndrome it became in a pandemic among homosexual people in important cities such as Los Angeles Ney York and San Francisco. Young men were dying in inexplicable conditions that the CDC had to intervene with a several researches, surveys and studies about those cases. During the research noticed that one man were most related with more cases, this person was Gaetan Dugas, a Canadian young men, who travel to US. As he knew he was going to die, he stared to spread the disease for something he called a “gay cancer”.

The dawn of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980’s prompted delayed waves of responses sweeping out across America. First impacting a scattering of gay men in San Francisco, the disease gained the stigma of being a “gay disease” that fascinated the nation as health systems and communities struggled to cope with its rapid spread. However, one man, seemingly unaffected by the mix of panic and curiosity, did not react. The Ronald Reagan administration has historically been criticized for its lack of response to the AIDS crisis. Many different aspects of society were instead forced to step up and carry the burden of slowing and responding to the crisis, in a reactionary shift. The Reagan administration’s lackluster response to the AIDS crisis of the

When the AIDS and HIV virus crept its way into the human-race, it quickly, and without warning, claimed the lives of millions. Then when its destructive wake had finally been abated, it left behind several untold mysteries. Throughout the course of this class, all the new material we have been exposed to has added some unique piece to the puzzle of the AIDS epidemic. Each puzzle pieces have ranged from speculations on how the AIDS epidemic had begun, to what exactly has the epidemic done. We have also tackled the question and how it forced a change in society. Our newest piece of the puzzle is the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” by William Cran. Although this documentary did not surprise me in its content, it did, however, affirm certain types

According to a report published in the February 1998 edition of “Nature”, scientists identified what they believe is the earliest case of AIDs in a man from the Congo in 1959. (Lerner and Hombs 39) By the end of the year 1980, 80 men would have been diagnosed with at least of the opportunistic infections that are a characteristic of AIDs. (Lerner and Hombs 40) AIDs cases in the 1980s increased dramatically not only around the world but in the United States, primarily in larger cities like Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. The numbers of AIDs diagnoses and deaths spiraled out of control throughout the 1980s and towards the end of 1989 there were 117,500 cases of AIDS reported and 89,000 related deaths.(Lerner and Hombs 54) In the

Over 1 million Americans live with HIV. While treatable, medical costs are often increasing. The CDC reports that the estimated lifetime cost of treating HIV is $379,000 (in 2010 dollars), and that nearly 30 percent of those living with the virus are uninsured. Justin Terry-Smith was diagnosed with HIV in 2006. He lives in Washington D.C., a city whose HIV infection rate exceeds the World Health Organization’s definition of a “severe epidemic.”

As have been described above, HIV can have a potential effect on immunological cells, which are important to protect the body from additional infections such as Tuberculosis (TB), Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and other viral or bacterial infections. An effective treatment is needed to reconstruct what HIV has damaged. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is a common treatment to stop the viral replication and decrease the disease progression, which may lead to a vast decline of the morbidity and mortality. The standard treatment involves a combination of at least three drugs; often known as a highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) where the most common types are Nucleoside reverse transcriptase

The 1980s were particularly devastating for the gay men. 1985 marked the beginning of President Reagan’s second term. Reagan is mentioned several times over the course of part 1 not only to set a political backdrop for the series, but also challenges the audience to question why the government was so slow to respond to this issue. Reagan didn’t even give his first speech on HIV/AIDS until years after the on-start of the epidemic and after thousands of lives had been lost. In this context, it is fair to assume that HIV/AIDS really became an epidemic through the lack of immediate action from the government and medical establishments that can be directly attributed to homophobic. From its onset, there was widespread fear of contamination as AIDS was constructed as a fatal infectious disease that threatened to wipe out mankind. It was also seen as a “gay plague” or punishment for sexually abnormal behavior.

HIV disproportionately effects those living at or below poverty level. For many, lack of employment or underemployment can also mean a lack of insurance and access to consistent medical

The early days of the AIDS epidemic challenged the cartesian nature of biomedical culture. With its emphasis on empiricism, the superior biomedical mind could normally make sense of the inferior patient’s bodily concerns. In the early 80s, though, the scientific method seemed to be failing with AIDS, with no clear biological etiologic agent being identified, and rumors circulated. As the biomedical mind struggled to define and categorize AIDS, the moralistic nature of medical authority revealed itself. Instead of pathology residing in the biology of a patient, it appeared to transcend the patient’s biology and reveal deviant sexual behavior. Instead of being able to treat or study the disease, the diseased bodies were quarantined. Even when it was understood that AIDS had a viral cause, biomedicine’s quarantining practices became subtler, but still perpetuated the social stigma of AIDS patients. In this essay, I examine the nature of AIDS stigma through the lens of two biomedical professionals’ memories of the first decade of the epidemic. One such professional is Dr. M. Robert Hill, M.D. He is a retired internist of 68 years, who used to work at Missouri Baptist Medical Center in Town and Country, Missouri, and treated several AIDS patients before antiretroviral therapy was discovered. The other ethnographic source is Dr. Daniel Hanson, a current Immunology lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis, who was completing his second postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at

On July 16, 2012, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of Truvada, the first drug approved for reducing the risk of contracting an HIV infection in uninfected individuals ("FDA Approves First Drug for Reducing the Risk of Sexually Acquired HIV Infection"). Truvada is made up of two drugs, emtricitabine and tenofovir, that work by blocking an enzyme called reverse transcriptase, which HIV uses to copy its genetic material in order to reproduce. Truvada has been approved for the treatment of HIV in infected individuals for about ten years. However, scientific experiments have shown that it can be used to protect uninfected people who are at high-risk for acquiring the virus by taking the drug daily, before and after exposure (Costa-Roberts). Extensive research involving Truvada have been conducted over the years but the results have been interpreted differently among the HIV and AIDS society. While the need for a cure or vaccine for HIV is not commonly refuted, the controversy surrounding the daily use of Truvada as a preventive measure against AIDS center around effectiveness and commitment.

This case study focuses Burroughs Wellcome and their drug Retrovir. Retrovir is a drug that treats AIDS and AID-related complications. In 1987, Burroughs Wellcome obtained approval from the FDA to market azidothymidine (AZT), also known as Retrovir, as a treatment for AIDS. Retrovir was the only kind of drug on the market. Because of this, many critics accused Burroughs Wellcome of price-gouging, as the price of Retrovir was $188 for a hundred 100mg capsules sold to wholesalers. The president of Burroughs Wellcome, T.E Haigler, defended the high price, stating it was due to uncertainty in the market, the possibility of new drug therapies, and profit margins created by new drugs. Even though Retrovir’s price was dropped 20 percent in December 1987, and 20 percent more in September 1989, due to the House of Representatives launching an investigation, there was still pressure to lower the price. The big question faced in this case is what is Burroughs Wellcome’s next move regarding pricing?