Biotech firms want drug approval hastened

Biotechnology industry leaders want to speed up the process of bringing drugs to market by broadening the mission of the Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that reviews new medicines, to include innovation as well as product safety. A raft of industry proposals to overhaul the FDA and create fresh incentives to help fund drug development will be unveiled in Washington next week at the 2011 international convention of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, known as BIO. “We want to change the formal legal mission statement of the FDA,’’ BIO president James C. Greenwood said in Boston yesterday. “The FDA understands that if they approve a product that’s not safe or effective, that’s a failure, and we agree with that. But it’s not deemed a failure if people die because they took too long to approve a product." Greenwood was attending the CEO Biotech Conference at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where earlier in the day Senator Scott Brown accused the FDA of “crushing innovation’’ and “throwing a wet blanket’’ on drug discovery and medical device development by delaying decisions on...