Pharma isn't all Turings and Purdues, you know

It’s easy to demonize biopharmaceutical companies these days, with Purdue Pharma in the news for misleading doctors and patients about how addictive its drug OxyContin actually is, and the three big insulin makers on the hot seat for possible price gouging. But that shouldn’t apply to the industry, writes Jean Walsh, who has been living with Friedreich’s ataxia for 38 years, in a First Opinion.

“Fortunately for me, and for the millions of people like me with rare diseases, advancements in research over the past 30-plus years, many of them from the biopharma industry, offer not just hope but extra years of life.”

She points to 20 treatment approaches, supported by the biopharma industry, in various stages of development for Friedreich’s ataxia. Walsh adds: “I can imagine people thinking I work for a biopharma company or was asked — or paid — by the industry to write this article. None of those are true.”

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