Bayer cuts price of ciprofloxacin after Bush threatens to buy generics

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7320.1023

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Fred Charatan

Florida

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 generic alternatives.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had recommended ciprofloxacin as the antibiotic of choice for both inhalation and cutaneous anthrax (MMWR Weekly 2001;50:917-8(tables 1 and 2)), although this week it changed its advice, and decided to recommend doxycycline.

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

Before the new advice was issued, however, Bayer …