Af­ter crit­ics lam­bast­ed Gilead for grab­bing the FDA's spe­cial rare drug sta­tus on remde­sivir, they're giv­ing it back

Two days af­ter Gilead won or­phan drug sta­tus for remde­sivir as a po­ten­tial treat­ment for Covid-19, they’re hand­ing it back.

The com­pa­ny was slammed from sev­er­al sides af­ter Gilead re­port­ed that the FDA had come through with the spe­cial sta­tus, which comes with 7 years of mar­ket ex­clu­siv­i­ty, the waiv­er of FDA fees and some tax cred­its as well. Typ­i­cal­ly, every­one who can get or­phan sta­tus lands it with­out much of a fuss, but De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Bernie Sanders, Pub­lic Cit­i­zen and oth­er con­sumer groups were out­raged.

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