Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla warned on Tuesday that Chinese biotechnology science is progressing at “the speed of light,” presenting commercial and national security risks to the U.S.
Bourla, who has helmed the company since 2018 and is also chairman of PhRMA, the largest drugmakers trade group in D.C., cited financial setbacks to the U.S. biotech industry, largely due to former President Joe Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), and pointed to China’s aggressive approach of replicating the U.S. system and dumping funds into the industry. He simultaneously praised President Donald Trump for Operation Warp Speed in his first term.
“The thing that I discuss with everyone in the [Trump] administration, and I think that resonates a lot with Democrats and the Republicans — with everybody in the administration, including HHS and everywhere — it is that the Chinese right now are progressing with the speed of light in their science,” Bourla said during the company’s quarterly earnings call. “Biotech … the U.S. has the dominant scientific position in biotech because we have created this ecosystem of biotech and pharma, and academia, and all of that. This is exactly what the Chinese have replicated in the last four years.”
“And in the last four years, IRA was a significant setback for us that took down a lot of funding for … the private sector toward biotech. So the biotechs now currently … because of the four previous years, they are at a historical low, and as a result, there is very little money going to the biotech,” he continued.
A February report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) echoed Bourla’s sentiment, stating that the drug price controls granted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in the IRA have discouraged development of certain kinds of drugs by shifting research and development incentives, which ultimately “reduce[d] funding for many smaller biotech companies that are developing effective small-molecule treatments for serious diseases.”
“The Chinese are doing the opposite, and right now they are having very, very good science,” Bourla said.
An April report from Endpoints News indicated that Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Biotech Index has surged 32 percent this year, while the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index in the U.S. has fallen 15 percent.
“I think that’s something that everybody [should] be concerned [about]. They should be concerned, not only from [a] commercial, but also from [a] national security point of view,” he continued. “Imagine if in the next pandemic, the medicines that will help will not be invented in this country, but in another country — that will be a problem.”
In other interviews, Bourla has expressed hope for the industry and said the U.S. is “experiencing a scientific renaissance, with previously unimaginable technology and advances in science.” In Tuesday’s call, Bourla sounded skeptical of President Trump’s planned pharmaceutical tariffs and their impacts on manufacturing, research, and development, but complimentary of the economic impacts of Operation Warp Speed during Trump’s first term.
“He created this miracle … I mean, there was no other country that had done something like that in the world, and the entire world was able to save their economies and survive based on what Operation Warp Speed did,” he said.
“I told him that he should have received the Nobel Prize for that, and that was unfair, but he didn’t. It was [a] … serious contribution,” he added.
The Trump administration for its part “is clearly trying to telegraph that it isn’t out to kill biotech innovation,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
“In an interview late last week, newly appointed FDA Commissioner Marty Makary—a former Johns Hopkins surgeon—delivered a relatively bullish message for the biotech sector,” the report states. “Speaking with Megyn Kelly, Makary said he would speed up approvals for rare-disease treatments, cut reliance on animal testing by incorporating computational models and shorten the industry’s typical 10-year drug- development timeline.”
“He also vowed to reduce pharmaceutical companies’ influence over the FDA approval process and end what he called the agency’s ‘cozy’ relationship with the industry. Importantly, he emphasized a commitment to protecting innovation and maintaining a science-based approach to regulation.”
President Trump also signed an executive order on April 15 seeking to correct the “pill penalty” in the IRA’s drug-price negotiation program, which the pharmaceutical industry argues has discouraged the development of pills because the program allows pills to become eligible for negotiations sooner than injections. The order directs HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to modify the program so pills and injected drugs are treated equally, according to the report.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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