Henry Waxman: “Mr. Speaker, I want to use this opportunity to give some historical perspective on some of these issues with regard to…”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to use this opportunity to give some historical perspective on some of these issues with regard to the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Speaker, I think that the pharmaceutical industry could be credited with the enormous contribution they make in curing diseases. But I think we need to recognize that when the Orphan Drug Act was first talked about, it was due to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry did not pay attention to people who had rare diseases because the profit potential was not there for them to make the investment. They were much more interested, as any business would be, in trying to manufacture drugs that could have a widespread audience, so to speak, to buy their product. A lot of the work they do is based on the government investment and research. We give money to the National Institutes of Health, and they work with grants and contracts with leading researchers all around the country to do the basic work. The pharmaceutical industry then takes the benefit of that public investment and finds an application which leads to products that they are able to market. They then get a patent on the product. I have always regretted the fact that the public does not get its share of the return on our investment for some of these very same products.”