[M]edical societies and doctors with financial ties to Sanofi served as components of a coordinated public relations strategy to use FDA’s citizen petition process to prevent or delay generic alternatives to its blockbuster drug Lovenox from coming on the market… Every day that pharmaceutical companies successfully delay safe and effective generic alternatives to their brand name drugs by attempting to manipulate the citizen petition process is another day that Americans pay more for their drugs.
PharmaLive quotes a letter from the Senate Finance Committee to the FDA, asking that agency if it would please make an effort to find out whether people like Duke University professor Victor Tapson are in the pay of pharma (Sanofi seems to have given him almost $300,000) before taking into consideration their representations seemingly on behalf of the industry. (Tapson apparently did not disclose, in his representations, that Sanofi was paying him.)
Here’s a letter Tapson sent to the FDA under the non-generic gravitas of the Duke University name. (I found the letter via Paul Thacker at POGO.) I gather Duke is fine with being officially enlisted in efforts to restrict generic drugs in the United States.