THE PAIN JOLTED ME AWAKE. It was barely dawn, a misty February morning in 2023. My side felt as if I’d been stabbed.
I had been dealing with pain for weeks — a bothersome ache that felt like a bad runner’s cramp. But now it was so intense I had to brace myself against the wall to stand up…
There were lesions, areas of bone destruction, on top of both of my hip bones and on my sternum. These were hallmarks of multiple myeloma. “Cancer,” he said.
That drug I take is called Revlimid. It is a derivative of thalidomide, a slightly tweaked version of the parent compound.
Revlimid is now one of the bestselling pharmaceutical products of all time, with total sales of more than $100 billion. It has extended tens of thousands of lives — including my own.
But Revlimid is also, I soon learned, extraordinarily expensive, costing nearly $1,000 for each daily pill. (Although, I later discovered, a capsule costs just 25 cents to make.)
That steep tab has put the drug’s lifesaving potential out of reach for some cancer patients, who have been forced into debt or simply stopped taking the drug. The price also helps fuel our ballooning insurance premiums…
There was a common internal theme at Celgene that cancer patients were willing to pay almost any amount Celgene charged.
When Celgene launched Revlimid in December of 2005, it set the initial price at $55,000 a year, or $218 a pill, which was about double what analysts expected.
Seven months later, when the FDA approved the drug for multiple myeloma, the price jumped to $70,560 a year, or $280 a pill.
