Everybody has heard it before. If you don't like what's going on, "Write your Congressman." With the threat of Senators Clinton/Schumer's plan for follow-on biologics being lumped into the PDUFA reauthorization, Jim Greenwood, President and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) told the audience, "Any discussion regarding the development of a pathway for follow-on biologics must focus on the facts and seek to protect patient safety and incentives for continued biomedical innovation."
This message was not unexpected. Those who are against speeding the path for approval of follow-on biologics cite difficult questions surrounding science, patient safety and intellectual property, and they don't want Congress to rush into this. But, in case the lobbying that's already going on doesn't work, Greenwood went to far as to suggest that everyone (presumably not those in attendance who represented biogenerics firms) could help kill this legislation and that the 22,000 people estimated to have attended BIO this year should "write their Congressman." To simplify this task, BIO even offers a sample letter to use.
Greenwood should know about "writing your congressman."Before heading up BIO, which represents more than 1,100 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations in all 50 U.S. states and 31 other nations, he was "your congressman," at least for some folks in Pennsylvania, where he represented the state's Eighth District in the U.S. House of Representatives from January 1993 through January 2005.
Bill Swichtenberg
