https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200325/10540844171/public-pressure-works-gilead-asks-fda-to-rescind-orphan-drugs-designation-possible-covid-19-treatment.shtml

Earlier this week, we wrote about the sham orphan drug designation that the FDA gave to Gilead Sciences for remdesivir. As we explained, remdesivir was developed with mostly public funds, and Gilead Sciences already held three patents on it, with a fourth one pending. Orphan drugs designations are supposed to be extra incentives for drug makers to target rare diseases. The issue here was that part of the definition of a rare disease under the Orphan Drugs Act is that it has to affect fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. Ridiculously, the law does not take into account the rate at which the disease spreads -- just how many people have it at the time a drug maker requests the designation. Even worse, the law explicitly says that the FDA cannot remove the designation if the affected group later grows to over 200,000.

Over the last few days, anger continued to grow at Gilead and the FDA -- including with the news that the FDA won't even say when Gilead applied for Orphan Drug status, because that's apparently "a commercial secret." Either way, this morning a ton of public interest groups, organized by Public Citizen, sent a letter to Gilead asking it to renounce its claim for orphan drug status: