home
articles on people and cancer
Charles Moertel is known as an opponent of alternative cancer treatments. He oversaw the Mayo Clinicıs negative trials of both laetrile and vitamin C. Now, however, he has found an unlikely target: the giant U.S. company that manufactures the drug levamisole.
In 1989, Dr. Moertel made headlines when he championed the use of 5-FU and levamisole (an animal de-wormer) as the treatment of choice for advanced colon cancer. At a meeting in Washington he handed over his clinical test results on levamisole to Johnson & Johnson, the $12 billion-a-year health care giant that holds a patent on the drug's use in cancer.
"I will do everything I can to help get this treatment to patients," he told assembled NCI, FDA and J&J officials. "In return, Iwant a promise from Johnson & Johnson that you will market this at a reasonable price. I assumed they were honest and honorable people," he now says, in a detailed account in the Los Angeles Times (9/11/93).
Nine months later, however, he learned that J&J had increased the price of levamisole one hundredfold. For animals, it costs 6 cents per pill; as a human cancer drug, $6.00. A year's supply for a sheep costs $1.00 ; for humans, $1,200.00.
"So began the transformation," says the Los Angeles Times, "of a trusting Mayo Clinic researcher into an outraged, outspoken industry critic." But so far, J&J has refused to budge on the price. "We're the only Western nation that doesnıt regulate drug prices," Moertel fumes. "This is out of hand. This is nonsense."
Coordinator Anne Beattie
@ 144 St. John's Place,
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Phone 718-636-4433
Fax 718-636-0186