Investors Call for Access to Affordable Medicines

Jan. 13, 2025
Shareholders request Human Rights Due Diligence to determine whether pharma companies do everything they can to increase drug access and affordability

In December, shareholders in leading pharmaceutical companies announced that they had filed proposals for 2024 proxies requesting a human rights due diligence (HRDD) process to determine whether the companies were doing everything they could to increase access to and affordability of their medicines. The proposals were filed at AbbVie, Eli Lilly, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Moderna.

In a press release, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) reported that investors argued that failure to ensure that advancements in life-saving medicine and technologies are available, accessible, and affordable to all people poses considerable risks to companies and their stakeholders.

For example, Gilead has been criticized for strategies to enhance profitability with clear consequences for patient health, ICCR noted. “Gilead failed to enter licenses for HIV/AIDS medications into the Medicines Patent Pool for generics manufacturing that would dramatically increase their access and affordability in lower- and middle-income countries.” Gilead has also been accused of postponing seeking approval for a safer form of tenofovir, an antiretroviral medicine, to fully exploit the exclusivity period for an already FDA-approved but much more toxic form of the medication.

Meanwhile, a Dutch court cleared the way to proceed against pharmaceutical company AbbVie over the alleged excessive pricing of its patented drug Humira, Ferry Biederman of The Lancelet reported in July.

“The escalating price and reduced access to legacy medicines like insulin, on which millions of Americans are dependent, has been an ongoing symbol of the failures of the U.S. healthcare system,” said Cathy Rowan of Trinity Health, which filed a proposal requesting an investigation at Eli Lilly, in a statement. 

“The proposals are expected to be voted on by shareholders at the annual meetings of the pharma companies this spring,” ICCR noted.

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