National
High price for Hep C drug sparks controversy
Treatment can cure disease common in people with HIV


Carl Schmid, deputy director of the AIDS Institute, said Sovaldi is expensive, ‘but this is remarkable progress and the cure rate is extremely high.’ (Photo courtesy of Schmid)
The pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences received praise earlier this month for bringing to market a newly approved drug capable of curing the potentially fatal liver disease Hepatitis C without the serious and debilitating side effects caused by the existing drug used to treat the disease.
Experts say 20 percent of people with HIV are co-infected with Hepatitis C, which over a period of years can lead to death through liver cancer and liver failure. Physicians treating people with HIV, including Whitman-Walker Health’s medical director, Dr. Richard Elion, have called Gilead’s new drug a major breakthrough.
But at least two organizations that advocate for people with HIV and Hepatitis C have denounced Gilead for setting the wholesale price for its new drug Sovaldi at a level they consider exorbitant and which they say could lead to further escalating prices for AIDS drugs.
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the nation’s largest private organization providing medical services for people with HIV/AIDS, and the Fair Pricing Coalition, which advocates for affordable prices for prescription drugs for people with serious illnesses, called Gilead’s decision to set a wholesale acquisition cost of $84,000 for a 12-week treatment regimen of Sovaldi unprecedented.
“There can be no better example of the unbridled greed of the pharmaceutical industry than Gilead’s latest move: pricing its new hepatitis drug at $84,000 per 28-tablet bottle or $1,000 per pill,” said Michael Weinstein, president of AHF.
Lynda Dee, co-chair of Fair Pricing Coalition, called Sovaldi a “very safe and highly effective drug” but noted that it must be used in combination with other drugs to treat different Genotypes, or strains, of Hepatitis C.
She said that although the other drugs – pegylated interferon and ribavirin – are not as expensive as Sovaldi, the price tag for combination therapy with Sovaldi comes to $93,000 and $168,000 for various treatment regimens for a single person living with Hepatitis C.
“Gilead has set the bar dangerously high as other companies determine prices for similar Hepatitis C drugs as they enter the market,” Dee said.
In a statement released at the time the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Sovaldi for patient use on Dec. 6, Gilead said it had put in place a patient assistance program to ensure that people with Hepatitis C have access to Sovaldi regardless of their ability to pay for it.
The statement said the program provides assistance to “patients who are uninsured, underinsured or who need financial assistance to pay for the medicine.” The program, called Support Path, will provide Sovaldi “at no charge for eligible patients with no other insurance options,” according to the statement.
While praising Gilead for offering such a program, which is common within the pharmaceutical industry, critics say the high price for Sovaldi would likely prompt other companies to put in place similarly high pricing policies for other promising drugs about to be released for the treatment of both Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS.
Some Wall Street analysts suggested Gilead’s price for Sovaldi may be justified when taking into consideration the amount it spent to bring such a beneficial drug to market. Bloomberg business news service reported that Gilead, which didn’t invent Sovaldi, paid $11 billion in 2011 to buy Pharmasset, Inc., the company that developed Sovaldi and other Hepatitis C drugs expected to be approved soon.
Bloomberg cited pharmaceutical industry observers who said the Hepatitis C drugs Gilead obtained through this purchase could pull in as much as $20 billion by 2020.
Clinical trials with patients monitored by the Food and Drug Administration demonstrated that Sovaldi had a cure rate of more than 90 percent for patients with the Genotype 2 strain of Hepatitis C following a 12-week regimen with the drug ribavirin. Patients with Genotype 3, another strain of Hepatitis C, had a similarly successful cure rate following a 24-week regimen of Sovaldi and Ribavirin, the trials showed.
For patients with Genotype 1 or 4 of the Hepatitis C infection, the Sovaldi treatment needed to be combined with pegylated alfa interferon, the drug of choice for Hepatitis C before the development of Sovaldi and other new drugs nearing completion of clinical trials, statements by Gilead and the FDA said. Interferon causes serious and debilitating side effects for most patients, forcing some to stop using it before the Hepatitis C virus can be eliminated, according to medical experts.
The good news, according to those monitoring Hepatitis C treatment developments, is that Gilead and other pharmaceutical companies are close to releasing other new drugs capable of effectively curing patients with the Genotype 1 and Genotype 4 strains without the need for Interferon.
“I believe that Sovaldi will have a major impact on public health by significantly increasing the number of Americans who are cured of Hepatitis C,” said Dr. Ira Jacobson, chief of the Division of Gastroenterology at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, who served as a principal investigator in the clinical trials of Sovaldi.
Carl Schmid, deputy director of the AIDS Institute, which advocates for people with HIV, said the ability of Sovaldi to actually cure patients with Hepatitis C makes it different from HIV drugs on the market, which keep most patients healthy but cannot cure HIV/AIDS.
“Yes, it’s expensive,” he said of Sovaldi. “But this is remarkable progress and the cure rate is extremely high.”
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant

A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.