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Patents: how the profit machine costs lives
Despite miraculous trial results showing new treatment could halt transmission, corporate greed and patent laws condemn millions to preventable infection and death, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
LINING THEIR POCKETS: Gilead Sciences HQ in Foster City, California; (insert) Descovy used for HIV prevention through pre-exposure prophylaxis [(L to R) Coolcaesar/CC - EEJCC/CC]

DECIDING a particular year when a scientific discovery or advance took place is often an arbitrary decision. Archimedes is said to have leapt from his bathtub and shouted “Eureka!” when he realised that the volume of any object, no matter how complicated, could be found by placing the object in water and measuring the volume of water it displaces.

But even that eureka moment is of dubious authenticity. It is rare for scientific research to advance in a glorious instant of revelation.

So when the journal Science named the HIV/AIDS drug lenacapavir as its “breakthrough of the year,” it shouldn’t be surprising that its story began far earlier.

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