The neg­a­tive re­ac­tion to the im­pend­ing de­par­ture of Sanofi CEO Paul Hud­son, and Mer­ck KGaA leader Belén Gar­i­jo as his re­place­ment, is per­haps sur­pris­ing giv­en the French com­pa­ny's mut­ed per­for­mance un­der Hud­son’s lead­er­ship.

Sanofi's shares fell about 3% in Paris and 4% in New York, a cold shoul­der that may sim­ply re­flect the scale of the chal­lenge that Gar­i­jo faces when she takes the reins in late April. She’ll have less than five years be­fore the com­pa­ny’s im­muno­log­i­cal jug­ger­naut Dupix­ent goes gener­ic.

In­vestors are con­cerned Gar­i­jo doesn’t have a track record of de­liv­er­ing R&D pro­duc­tiv­i­ty at Mer­ck KGaA, Jef­feries man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Michael Leucht­en told End­points News in an in­ter­view. He con­sid­ers that crit­i­cism “a lit­tle un­fair” be­cause the Ger­man con­glom­er­ate fo­cused its cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion on ar­eas oth­er than phar­ma.

Vinay Prasad, the head of the FDA’s vac­cines and bi­o­log­ics of­fice, is back in the news af­ter his con­tro­ver­sial de­ci­sion to re­ject Mod­er­na’s flu vac­cine, as well as al­le­ga­tions in the Wall Street Jour­nal that he is fac­ing mul­ti­ple per­son­nel com­plaints in­side the agency.

Ac­cord­ing to the Jour­nal, Prasad has been the sub­ject of in­ter­nal com­plaints that in­clude “sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, re­tal­i­a­tion against sub­or­di­nates and ver­bal­ly be­rat­ing staff.” The Jour­nal cit­ed un­named sources, who al­so de­scribed sub­stan­tial trav­el ex­pens­es in­curred by Prasad.

A se­nior FDA leader who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty told End­points News that Prasad has as­signed cer­tain sub­or­di­nates mean­ing­less tasks and has ver­bal­ly at­tacked staff.

Prasad didn’t re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment, and HHS and FDA al­so didn’t re­spond.

For much of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Eu­rope was where new med­i­cines were born. Alexan­der Flem­ing's ac­ci­den­tal dis­cov­ery of peni­cillin in a Lon­don lab­o­ra­to­ry in 1928 launched a con­ti­nent-wide en­ter­prise. In the 1970s, Eu­rope pro­duced more than twice as many new drugs as the US. In the 1990s, Eu­rope still ac­count­ed for half of glob­al R&D spend­ing.

But with the 21st-cen­tu­ry suc­cess­es of US bio­phar­ma — and the re­cent, ex­plo­sive rise of Chi­na — Eu­rope has be­come al­most an af­ter­thought. We asked near­ly 1,000 bio­phar­ma pro­fes­sion­als, with a me­di­an ex­pe­ri­ence of 16-20 years in the in­dus­try, where they’d start their ca­reer if they could do it all over again. About 58% picked the US, and 27% said Asia Pa­cif­ic (most­ly Chi­na).