'This is an industry that everyone [bleeping] hates'

Unsettled skies over Kendall Square                                                                             Adam Feuerstein/STAT

It’s hard to argue with this succinct assessment of the current situation, offered to me Tuesday by one of my closest Wall Street confidants as the Food and Drug Administration and other health agencies were being roiled by the job cuts demanded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and stocks tumbled into a depressing abyss. 

What RFK Jr. did over the past week, starting with the ouster last Friday of Peter Marks from the FDA, was more than DOGE cost-cutting. It was a direct assault on the biotech and pharma industry, motivated by his decades-long anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-medicine worldview. 

RFK Jr. believes pharma makes people sick, and the FDA, by extension, is complicit. He’s a conspiracy theorist who believes the medicines that pharma invents damage public health. He’s also in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Hard to believe, but that’s where we are. 

Sadly, a lot of people in this country side with RFK Jr. I tell myself constantly that X is not real life, but it’s hard to ignore the nutty posts and replies from people who want Marks thrown in jail, accuse Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla of murder, and refuse to vaccinate their children.

When RFK Jr. was nominated last fall, some in the industry believed he would be muzzled and not permitted to espouse his most severe anti-science, anti-medicine beliefs. President Trump is an America First, pro-business Republican, so he’s not going to let RFK Jr. destroy one of the country’s most important industries, we were told.

How’s that working, folks? 

Wait, what did you do with Adam? He hates biotech

At its best, the biotech industry creates lifesaving medicines for patients in need, and delivers financial rewards to the investors who back those drugmakers. But at its worst, biotech is a minefield of scientific setbacks and plunging stock prices. It can be maddeningly deceptive, overly promotional, and financially profligate. 

You can believe both things, and I do. 

I also believe the FDA should implement regulatory changes to help streamline drug development, but blowing up the agency by forcing out essential regulators isn't a good idea. 

The ‘health defense industry...saved President Trump’

Illustration: STAT; Photo: AP

Going on the offensive — smartly — might help. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals CEO Len Schleifer was on CNBC this week, and I liked a lot of what he had to say about the fixing pharma's current troubles — and by proxy, stock prices. 

“I like to call it the health defense industry. Health defense. We should just be calling it health defense, just like military defense, so people understand how important it is,” Schleifer said. 

Biotech is an “economic juggernaut,” he continued. “But more importantly, it’s the health defense industry. We supply the solutions for what people need when there are pandemics. Remember, it was the biotech industry and the biopharmaceutical industry that saved the world.”

It was a Regeneron drug that “saved President Trump when he was dying from Covid,” Schleifer said. The Covid vaccines developed by Pfizer and others were “unbelievable.”

What Schleifer said next would play really well with Trump, if he hears it. 

“So, the industry is really important, but the Europeans aren't paying for the innovation that creates these great drugs,” he said. “The industry is under threat if we don't pay for innovation,” he added, a reference to European price controls and other policies that make it more difficult to sell medicines profitably overseas. 

“If we got those deals here and we lower the prices just like they are in Europe, there'd be nothing to pay for innovation. So, we have to do something. They're ripping us off.”

What’s the fix? 

“If they refuse to open up their markets to our drugs in a fair way, we can just charge them some sort of tax or tariff or something that the government could use to offset what they spend on drugs in the United States,” said Schleifer. “Some way, there has to be an equilibration where they're paying their fair share.”

And in case Trump didn’t hear the first time, Schleifer added:

“I really think the concept of the Europeans and Canadians ripping off our innovation is just not right. We have to do something about it, so we can get these drugs and we can get these vaccines, so we can have the innovation that industry thrives on.”  

Schleifer demurred when asked by the CNBC hosts if he supports RFK Jr. being HHS secretary, but he’s also clearly troubled by RFK’s anti-science, anti-drug policies. 

“He's got some interesting ideas about food, but he needs a lot of help and expertise, in my opinion, on science,” said Schleifer. “His advisers in science are really assaulting science, so we need to inform him better."