Hontiveros: Biron et al protecting GMA, vested interests

Liberal senatorial bet and Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros today revealed that Iloilo Rep. Ferjenel Biron is taking the offensive to seek vengeance after he failed to protect his own vested interests and his principal—President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—in the Cheaper Medicines Law.

“Rep. Biron’s agenda to favor his pharmaceutical business in the Cheaper Medicines Bill, through his proposed Drug Price Regulatory Board, was thwarted by those of us in Congress who saw better,” Hontiveros said.

“He also failed to protect his principal, President Arroyo, from public ire after she miserably failed to implement the law and lower medicine prices despite the powers given to her by Congress. Now, he and his cohorts are seeking revenge politically, by trying to discredit Senator Mar Roxas,” she added.

Hontiveros, co-author of the Cheaper Medicines Law, said that the proposed Drug Price Regulatory Board of Biron would have representatives of pharmaceutical companies, which is a clear intrusion of vested interests in the law. She also said such regulatory board—like similar regulatory bodies in other industries—is susceptible to corruption and to “regulatory capture.”

She revealed that Biron and his family owns Philippine Pharmawealth Inc. and Pharmawealth Laboratories, which have been suspended or disaccredited by the Department of Health and the Bureau of Food and Drug in numerous instances in the past due to its sale of substandard medicines.

“Marami nang pasyente ang namatay o napinsala nang husto dahil sa mga bulok na gamot na ibinebenta ng kanyang mga drug company. Hindi ko alam kung matatawag mong ‘fatherly love’ iyon (Many patients have died or have been badly injured because of substandard medicines being sold by his drug companies. I don’t know if you can call that ‘fatherly love’),” he said.

“Kung meron man siyang titulo, baka ‘father of substandard and deadly medicines’ pa (Maybe he can claim to be the ‘father of substandard and deadly medicines.’),” Hontiveros said.

In April 2000 in Tagbilaran City, Bohol, resident doctors of Gov. Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital issued a memorandum saying that Methylegrometrine Maleate supplied by Pharmawealth caused the death of Prescilla Galao and the performance of emergency hysterectomies on four other patients.

Doctors of public hospitals in Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Antique and Rizal, and regional officials of DOH  and the Bureau of Food and Drug (BFAD) in Cagayan de Oro City, Davao City, and Guimaras complained also against substandard medicines supplied by Biron and Pharmawealth such as aminophylline injections, epinephrine, hydrocortisone sodium succinate, nifedipine, metronidazole, among others.