John Green (Author, YouTuber, etc), alongside various NGOs, has started a campaign to pressure Johnson and Johnson to allow generic versions of Sirturo (bedaquiline), a drug used to treat multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.
John Green (citing NGO sources) claims that allowing generic bedaquiline will reduce the cost by 60%, allowing up to 6 million people to receive treatment over the next 4 years, many of whom will die without that treatment.
Johnson and Johnson tweeted a response:
Which was tagged with a community note with MSF data to contradict their claims.
I'm open to feedback on objective resolution criteria for this market. Mainly I'll rely on reputable news sources, but I imagine there's lots of legal gray area that could come up here that I'm entirely unqualified to interpret. In general, if health NGOs and John Green seem pleased with the outcome, I'd lean towards resolving "Yes", otherwise "No". Resolution is based on announcement not implemention (mostly because the latter seems way hazier to piece through exactly what it means)
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Resolving this YES - all details of the deal are now out via an FAQ by StopTB, and both John Green and StopTB still seem to consider it a success.
> 17. Is there any additional information in the license agreement that is not covered in this Frequently Asked Questions document? No. The FAQ document actually provides more information than what is provided in the license agreement.
So here's the resolution criteria:
> if health NGOs and John Green seem pleased with the outcome, I'd lean towards resolving "Yes"
And here's statements from the relevant parties:
John Green: I am still mad. Like, I believe in celebrating wins as wins, but no victory is final. This is a LONG TERM fight for access. So much depends upon the details and the actual implementation. This is a sports account, so to use a sports metaphor: We won a match, not a trophy. ... So to the
@JNJNews and @JNJGlobalHealth admin, I really wish I could tell you that stress will decrease. But it won't until stress decreases for TB patients who need bedaquiline.
MSF: Today's announcement by the Stop TB Partnership/Global Drug Facility about a deal with pharmaceutical corporation Johnson & Johnson (J&J), for access to affordable generic versions of the lifesaving tuberculosis (TB) drug bedaquiline, offers a short-term solution for low- and middle-income countries -- but the deal remains just a stop-gap because bedaquiline will only be available to a limited number of countries that will be included in this agreement, procuring through the Global Drug Facility. The full terms of the agreement still need to be made public
Stop TB Partnership: This is an important agreement that will support our common goal of ending TB.
Partners in Health: PIH is cautiously optimistic after hearing today that Johnson & Johnson plans to work with the Global Drug Facility. However, we will not be ready to celebrate until @JNJNews takes further steps to ensure access to TB drugs.
Going by "health NGOs and John Green seem pleased with the outcome", I'd say.......... kinda? Maybe?
Going by "Did J&J decide to stop enforcing secondary patents on bedaquiline", MSF says:
> While the included list of countries has yet to be made public, we have learned that the 9 countries in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) region, which have some of the world’s highest burden of drug-resistant TB, are excluded from this deal.
That seems like a big caveat to me, so also...... kinda? Maybe?
I'm going to hold off on resolving this until the the full terms of the agreement are made public, at least.
In retrospect, it does seem overly optimistic that past me thought they could dance around the details by deferring to "do humans/NGOs seem happy", which is famously hard to interpret, but I'm committed now so I'll continue to monitor John Green's emotional state regarding this for the foreseeable future I suppose.
John Green quoting an article that specifically refers to the campaign as having "succeeded" makes me feel pretty confident that this counts as a success. Will still wait for the deal to be public.
Wow, that was really quick! I'll leave this open for a few days to let the dust settle I think and for others to convince me I'm wrong. My inclination is the as the world is right now, I would resolve this positively if nothing changes: John Green and the Stop TB partnership both seem pleased with the outcome.
However, Green has some caveats he's listing:
I imagine those could take a while to sort out? So I'm going to hold off briefly on resolution in case some of these caveats turn into bigger deal than they seem initially. Very open to feedback here on how to resolve this.
I don't think the outcome of any of those caveats should change the resolution because this resolves based on announcement and not implementation, but certainly reasonable to briefly wait before resolving anything involving twitter considering how quickly things move there.
@Joshua I think I agree. I'm basically just holding out for a case where JnJ puts out a press release with more details and John Green/NGOs see it as a rug-pull for whatever reason. Any of these caveats still existing after a press release or similar wouldn't be enough to cause a no resolution though, unless I'm misinterpreting them and they're somehow much more meaningful than they appear at a glance.
