Daniel O’Day Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gilead Sciences 333 Lakeside Drive Foster City, CA 94404 March 25, 2020 Dear Mr. O’Day, We were shocked to learn that your company sought a lucrative orphan drug designation from the Food & Drug Administration for remdesivir, one of relatively few medicines being explored as a possible treatment for COVID-19 this year. This is an unconscionable abuse of a program designed to incentivize research and development for treatments for rare diseases. COVID-19 is anything but a rare disease. Some estimates suggest that half or more of all Americans may ultimately contract the disease. We are writing to demand you reverse course and renounce your claim to orphan drug designation privileges for remdesivir. As you know, Gilead was able receive an orphan drug designation only by rushing to file its application while there were fewer than 200,000 COVID-19 U.S. cases. The United States most likely will surpass 200,000 COVID-19 reported cases in a matter of days. The real number of people suffering with the new coronavirus likely already has passed this mark. Calling COVID19 a rare disease mocks people’s suffering and exploits a loophole in the law to profiteer off a deadly pandemic. The orphan drug designation would provide Gilead with seven years of marketing exclusivity, enabling you to exclude competitors and charge high monopoly prices while people struggle to gain access. It would also further subsidize any costs through additional tax credits and allow you to monopolize the supply of the drug during a public health crisis. Making the claim to special orphan status even more outrageous is the fact that the public already has largely paid for remdesivir’s development through at least $60 million in grants and innumerable contributions from federal scientists. Public agencies around the world are sponsoring remdesivir’s clinical trials, including the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization. America, and the world, has the right to expect better from Gilead. We await your urgent response. Please contact Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen Access to Medicines Program Director at pmaybarduk@citizen.org. Signed, ACT UP Philadelphia AIDS Action Baltimore AIDS Healthcare Foundation Alliance for Retired Americans American Economic Liberties Project American Medical Student Association Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) Americans for Tax Fairness Center for Health and Social Change (CHSC) CPD Action (Center for Popular Democracy) CODEPINK Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, U.S. Provinces Consumer Action Demand Progress Education Fund Doctors for America End AIDS Now Faith in Healthcare Families USA Global Justice Now GNP+ (Global Network of People living with HIV) Health Care Voter Health GAP (Global Access Project) Korean Pharmacists for Democratic Society (KPDS) Labor Campaign for Single Payer Let's Kick ASS Lower Drug Prices Now Médecins Sans Frontières Access Campaign National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd National Center for Health Research National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association National Women's Health Network NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice Open Markets Institute Patients for Affordable Drugs People's Action People’s Health Institute (South Korea) Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation PrEP4All Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Protect All Children's Environment Public Citizen Public Eye (Switzerland) Rootsaction.org Sciencecorps Social Security Works STOPAIDS Treatment Action Group Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut Universities Allied for Essential Medicines Yale Global Health Justice Partnership Yolse