National Review - Red Tape Stymies a Fight Against Liver Disease

There's a reason the number of life-saving drugs the government approves drops every year.

by Deroy Murdock
National Review
April 22, 2014

Non-alcoholic fatty-liver disease afflicts some 9 to 15 million Americans. Left unchecked, it can devolve into fibrosis, cirrhosis, liver cancer, and liver failure. Galectin Therapeutics — a young, NASDAQ-traded company — is fighting this ailment with GR-MD-02, a new drug with encouraging Phase I clinical-trial results.

But Galectin’s progress comes amid frequent migraines, thanks to federal regulations. Galectin executive chairman James C. Czirr blames “all three of the bad boys” — Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and the USA Patriot Act’s financial-control provisions.

Czirr counts eight people in Galectin’s suburban-Atlanta headquarters. They share one corporate checkbook. Regardless, Sarbanes-Oxley’s section 404 demands that Galectin produce “an internal control report . . . for establishing and maintaining an adequate internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting.” Galectin, thus, must develop a manual to trace how each bil…