�Advocates, including those for breast cancer patients, ar concerned around their relationship with pharmaceutical company Genentech following Roche's bid for the company, the Wall Street Journal reports. Genentech announced on Wednesday that it had rejected Roche's $44 trillion bid for the 44% of the company that it does not already own, but Genentech invited a higher offer, signaling the company's "days as an self-governing concern whitethorn be numbered," the Journal reports.
According to the Journal, Genentech's rapport with patient advocates is unusual among drugmakers, specially because of the extent to which it has brought advocates into the company's civilization. Although dealings between Genentech and patient groups often have been "prickly," the company says input from advocates has prompted important changes in the innovation of clinical trials and has helped establish programs to meliorate access to medicines, the Journal reports. For case, advocates say their efforts to recruit patients for Genentech trials and to put pressure on FDA helped accelerate the approval of Herceptin, a boob cancer dose. In 1994, the AIDS advocacy radical ACT UP joined together with malignant neoplastic disease patients to pressure Genentech to make Herceptin, which was not ready for the mart, available to "desperately sick" patients, the Journal reports.
After Genentech turned depressed the request regarding Herceptin, groups "set siege" to the company, periodically electronic jamming fax machines and protesting at Genentech headquarters, according to the Journal. However, after iI high-profile patients died, the drugmaker proclaimed a policy to bring home the bacon early access to the drug and worked with advocates to set up a lottery system to select patients who would get the drug, since there was a limited supply at the prison term. FDA in September 1998 approved Herceptin three weeks after an advisory panel recommended the drug -- a speedy turnaround for which advocates said they were partially responsible. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Genentech's president for product development who handled the early-access talks, aforesaid, "There were many hard challenges. In that moment of inexperience, we (listened). We faced their anger. We saw they had unique insights ... that complement ours." Advocate Robert Erwin said, "From that point on, the relationship between Genentech and the advocacy community has steadily improved."
Roche said that if it acquired Genentech, it would allow Genentech to asseverate its creative independence and that patients would benefit from the acquisition. Barbara Brenner, administrator director of Breast Cancer Action, aforesaid, "Genentech has actually gone out of its way to engage conversations with the militant community." Brenner added, "We rarely agree, but at least we can talk to them. I make trouble imagining that testament continue if Roche owns the company" (Chase, Wall Street Journal, 8/14).
Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You prat view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for e-mail delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free servicing of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.
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