Bayer cuts price of ciprofloxacin after Bush threatens to buy generics

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7320.1023

BMJ 2001;323:1023 ( 3 November )

News

Bayer cuts price of ciprofloxacin after Bush threatens to buy generics

Fred Charatan, Florida
The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The Bush administration has won a major price concession from the German drug company Bayer AG for its antibiotic ciprofloxacin(Cipro), after threatening to buy genericalternatives.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had recommended ciprofloxacin as the antibiotic of choice for both inhalationand cutaneous anthrax (MMWR Weekly 2001;50:917-8(tables 1 and2)), although this week it changed its advice, and decided torecommenddoxycycline.

Dr Bradley Perkins, an anthrax specialist at the CDC, was quoted in the New York Times (2001;Oct 30: B8) as saying that thecentres were now recommending doxycycline because drug resistancewas "less of an issue withdoxycycline."

Before the new advice was issued, however, Bayer agreed to sell 100 million tablets of ciprofloxacin to the government at95 cents (66p) each $---$ 54% of its original wholesale price of $1.77.Three other drug manufacturers said that they would supply largequantities of their antibiotics free if . . . [Full text of this article]