These Orphans May Get Smaller Allowances

摘要

Treatments for rare diseases are hot properties for drugmakers, who covet the medicines for their tax breaks, through-the-roof prices, and the exclusive marketing rights granted by government regulators. Lately, though, those orphan drugs-so named because they treat rare conditions for which there are no other approved treatments-are being slammed by an unlikely culprit: the European economic slump. As more medicines win approval to treat such diseases, affecting no more than 5 in 10,000 people, Europe's austerity-conscious governments are applying the same pricing scrutiny to orphan drugs that they do to widely prescribed medicines for heart disease and diabetes. That's putting the brakes on an $86 billion sector of the pharmaceutical industry that's been growing twice as fast as the market as a whole.