Burroughs Wellcome Boycott

In the early days of the AIDS crisis, being diagnosed with HIV was a death sentence. The lack of any sort of treatment for the illness left doctors and patients alike helpless as otherwise perfectly healthy young people died by the hundreds. An unlikely candidate emerged from a cancer treatment developed in 1964 called zidovudine. While ineffective against cancer, the drug was found to suppress HIV replication, and was approved by the FDA in 1987, six years after the first US AIDS cases.¹ In the 1980s, that was quick for drug approval, which led to concerns about the safety and efficacy of zidovudine, better known as AZT. However, the drug soon hit the market, earning a new title: not only was it the first treatment for HIV, it was the most expensive prescription drug in history. Activists were outraged by the $8,000-a-year sticker price, leading to protests across the country against AZT’s producer, pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome.² ACT UP Rhode Island was no different, staging die-ins and boycotts of their other products. In a time when access to the drug could be the difference between life and death, people were rightfully angry about these barriers to access, and they made it known.