Tom Coburn: “I rise to speak for a minute in support of Senator Allard's amendment. I also want to recognize Senator Dodd's work, and…”

“I rise to speak for a minute in support of Senator Allard's amendment. I also want to recognize Senator Dodd's work, and I believe he truly cares about us getting pharmaceuticals to children. But I think the bill as written today has some very great risks for our children. I practice medicine. I can remember 25 years ago, for so many of the drugs, we did not know what we were doing as they related to children. We had sometimes great outcomes and sometimes poor outcomes as to the availability and knowledge of pharmaceuticals for children. We have a system that started 10 years ago that has been highly successful. Mr. President, 144 drugs have now been studied in kids. We know what we are doing with 144 drugs. With 25 of those drugs, we now know not to use them for children. How did we get there? We created an incentive that said: We will give you a 6-month patent extension if you will study pediatric indications and do a study on pediatric patients for this drug. It worked. As a matter of fact, it worked great. Now, I am having trouble understanding, as a physician, the therapy Senator Dodd wants to put on this. He is back to practicing medicine the way we did pediatrics 25 years ago with his amendment. I certainly hope he is right if he wins because there are going to be a lot of children in trouble if he is not. What his amendment actually says is, if you made $1 billion off a drug, you only get a 3-month extension.”