Up­dat­ed: How Gilead, Re­gen­eron and Genen­tech used po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions to hur­ry their Covid-19 drugs

When the pan­dem­ic first hit US shores in ear­ly 2020, there was pres­sure to act quick­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly among top bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies like Gilead, Roche and Re­gen­eron. They ex­pe­di­tious­ly re­pur­posed and de­vel­oped new Covid-19 treat­ments, reap­ing bil­lions along the way.

Thanks to the lat­est dump of for­mer FDA com­mis­sion­er Stephen Hahn’s emails and text mes­sages, re­leased via the FDA’s FOIA of­fice, the agency of­fers a peek be­hind the cur­tain on who ex­act­ly was reach­ing out to Hahn and oth­er for­mer Trump po­lit­i­cal fig­ures, what they were re­quest­ing and, thanks to hind­sight, how those ear­ly ef­forts paid off.

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