Annual Report 2005 - Boehringer Ingelheim

‘HIV is being played down’
An interview with Prof. Schlomo Staszewski
Q: Prof. Staszewski, let’s start by discussing AIDS in the
industrialised world. Hasn’t the disease here to a consider-
able extent already disappeared from public awareness,
even though it naturally remains with us? What’s your
experience with this issue?
Prof. Staszewski: AIDS, or HIV infection, is the most
dangerous epidemic, and the one with the greatest
consequences, in the latter part of the 20th
century and the beginning of the 21st century.
According to the World Health Organization, we
have more than 40 million infected people. Some
three million died of the disease in 2005. In the
same year, an additional five million were infected.
Most deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS is
really a deadly disease there. In our countries
nobody needs to die of AIDS any longer. With
the appropriate treatment the progression of the
disease can be halted and patients can be
prevented from developing the manifestations
of AIDS.
The dilemma with AIDS is, on the one hand, its
good treatability, and, on the other hand, that it’s
the most dangerous infectious disease of our time.
The question is how do we deal with it?
Naturally you can gloss over or keep AIDS secret,
if you live in the western world, where patients can
receive all the available medications. You can
conceal the fact that some things in the world are
not in order. You can also see that in the number of
Boehringer Ingelheim A n n u A l R e p o R t 2 0 0 5
new infections in European countries. In 2005,
they rose by about 10 %, in Germany, even by as
much as 20 %.
Q: What’s the reason?
Prof. Staszewski: HIV is being played down.
Awareness of the therapies and their effects on the
course of the disease HIV are removed and remote
from the real situation. This we have to correct.
We must say what kind of disease it is.
My criticism of the current trend is also that,
content with the possibility of individual therapy,
we’ve lost sight of the overall epidemic. People no
longer regard HIV as a fatal disease.
Advertising by the pharmaceutical industry often
also contributes considerably to glossing over the
disease. It focuses the HIV disease to the
industrialised world and shows in its pictures and
personal testimonials people who are well. It
presents things as though there is no problem
at all.
Q: A problem in the West is the development of drug-
resistance. How do we deal with this?
Prof. Staszewski: Resistance is a common phenom-
enon. In the event of therapy failure or side-effects,
the switch to a tolerable or effective therapy
is more difficult. When resistance has occurred,
you have to switch therapy to combine those