Hillary Clin­ton's War on Phar­ma II; A call for com­mon sense re­port­ing on Alzheimer's R&D

End­points as­sess­es the big bio­phar­ma R&D sto­ries of the week, with a lit­tle added com­men­tary on what they mean for the in­dus­try.

Hillary Clin­ton want­ed that war with phar­ma, bad­ly

For all the back­lash around Mar­tin Shkre­li’s brief, dis­as­trous turn as CEO of Tur­ing, the Tweet from Hillary Clin­ton con­demn­ing his price goug­ing stands out for the wide­spread dam­age it did to biotech stocks. There are lots of rea­sons why the biotech stock in­dex­es have tanked over the past year. And it’s easy to see why that may have been over­due. But hav­ing a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date use Shkre­li to de­clare a “war on pharma” sets the stage for the bat­tle to con­tin­ue in DC af­ter the votes are count­ed. Try­ing to score cheap points with vot­ers in a pri­ma­ry is a bad way to es­tab­lish pol­i­cy. Yet that is what we are look­ing at if Clin­ton is elect­ed. The US — and the bad­ly frac­tured health sys­tem that needs re­form­ing — de­serve bet­ter. And biotech has enough prob­lems right now with­out get­ting caught up in the war. Let’s urge Clin­ton to take a more re­spon­si­ble stand if she wins the big elec­tion Tues­day.

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