Un­der fire for Tru­va­da US pric­ing at House hear­ing, Gilead chief O'­Day touts R&D costs, as­serts gov­ern­ments patents are void

Gilead chief Daniel O’Day spent more than three hours de­fend­ing the $2000 month­ly price of its HIV pre­ven­tion pill, Tru­va­da, at a US House com­mit­tee on over­sight and re­form hear­ing Thurs­day, in re­sponse to a tsuna­mi of rage from AIDS ac­tivists, law­mak­ers and pa­tients re­gard­ing its pric­ing pol­i­cy.

Im­age: Daniel O’Day at the hear­ing. C-SPAN

Tru­va­da — emtric­itabine/teno­fovir diso­prox­il fu­marate (TDF/FTC) — was ap­proved in 2004 to treat HIV. In 2012, it was sanc­tioned by the FDA as a pre­ven­ta­tive treat­ment or PrEP (pre-ex­po­sure pro­phy­lax­is), in which in­di­vid­u­als at high risk for HIV take med­i­cines dai­ly to low­er their chances of con­tract­ing the in­fec­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the CDC, dai­ly PrEP re­duces the risk of get­ting HIV via sex­u­al in­ter­course by more than 90%.

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