The Orphan Drug Machine

Drugmakers Manipulate Orphan Drug Rules To Create Prized Monopolies

Drugmakers have brought almost 450 orphan drugs to market and collected rich incentives but nearly a third of those products aren’t new or were repurposed multiple times, an investigation shows.

Interactive: How Orphan Drugs Win The ‘Monopoly’ Game

Check out all the drugs the FDA has approved to treat rare diseases. You can search by brand name, or by disease, and see familiar names that were first sold on the mass market or all the drugs that won FDA approval to treat more than one rare disease.

A Golden Ticket That Fast-Tracks A Drug Through The FDA

A voucher awarded to companies that find treatments for rare childhood diseases can be sold to the highest bidder — and then used to speed up approvals for much more common drugs.