Sovaldi and the Public Science, Private Bill
Brothers and sisters, if NIH-supported hepatitis C research helped lead to sofosbuvir, the public had a hand in tending the scientific garden. Then Gilead’s Sovaldi arrived with an $84,000-per-course price tag. That is a peculiar kind of hospitality: the neighbors help water the seed, and when the fruit reaches the pharmacy, they are handed a bill as if they wandered in uninvited.
The fair question is not whether taxpayers invented every molecule. It is whether patients should face a steep private price as though the public had no part in the groundwork. That $84,000 figure is the price tag associated with Sovaldi here, not a claim about every patient’s bill today. Still, the moral arithmetic is plain: public support deserves honest recognition, and patients deserve a fair deal. The pharmacy window should not double as a corporate collection plate.