Save the Orphan Drug Tax Credit!

Earlier this month, House Republicans proposed eliminating the orphan drug tax credit, which was originally passed as part of the Orphan Drug Act in 1983 as an incentive for drug makers to spur the creation of medicines for rare diseases. Now, the House’s proposal eliminates the credit completely and the Senate’s version proposes to cut the credit’s value from 50 percent of qualified clinical testing expenses to 27.5 percent.

With nearly 30 million Americans suffering from rare diseases, we need to do better than the current 4 percent of rare diseases that have an approved treatment. Rare disease drug development is already a monumental task and without this life-saving credit, there is little incentive for drug developers to invest in new drugs for these rare diseases.

Here at ARC, we rely heavily on this credit to be able to work alongside drug companies in developing novel treatments for amyloidosis and, in turn, be able to continue making a significant and material contribution to the curability of systemic amyloidosis diseases.

“Rare disease drug development is extremely challenging – reducing the orphan drug tax credit is a backward step.” —  Isabelle Lousada, CEO, Amyloidosis Research Consortium

 

We applaud the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) for their advocacy efforts and urge you to visit their website to see the ways  you can take action. Please join us and the hundreds of other organizations in this fight to keep the Orphan Drug Tax Credit in its entirety. Take action now