Pharma Execs Don't Know Why Anyone Is Upset by a $94,500 Miracle Cure

Shima Andre, a 42-year-old freelance book editor in West Hollywood, Calif., learned she had hepatitis C while attending a Christmas party one evening in December 2011. Her doctor called via cell phone to say a routine blood test during her annual physical exam revealed she carried the liver-wasting virus. Now she and her husband—they’d married a few months earlier—would have to postpone their plans to have kids until she was clear of the potentially fatal disease. Andre concluded she’d probably contracted it from a drug habit she’d kicked years earlier.

More than 3 million Americans have hepatitis C, an infectious illness spread by addicts’ needles, poorly sterilized medical instruments, and, in the years before current blood bank screening standards, ordinary transfusions. Like Andre, many hepatitis C sufferers go for years without noticing symptoms. During that time the liver can scar, leading in some cases to cirrhosis, cancer, and organ failure. At the time Andre was diagnosed, the standard treatment included an injected medicine called interferon that offers uncertain prospects for a cure and causes such severe side effects as flu-like symptoms, anemia, and depression. After consulting her physician, Andre decided to delay treatment until the arrival of better medicines said to be in the pipeline.