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Email Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer
Tell him to stop freeloading off the taxpayers

Dear Mr. Termeer,

Since you are on Gov. Patrick's Council of Economic Advisors and taxpayers are being asked to provide at least $1 billion through the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to companies such as Genzyme, please answer the following questions:

1. What has been your role and that of other Genzyme executives, representatives and lobbyists in establishing, running and promoting the MLSC as the conduit for taxpayer-financed corporate welfare to highly profitable biotech companies?

2. In light of Genzyme's profits and your compensation packages totaling $58 million in 2006 and 2007, do you think it is fair that Genzyme should receive handouts from local, state and federal governments, particularly when badly needed social services and public sector jobs are being slashed?

3. How do you explain Genzyme soliciting and accepting taxpayer-funded subsidies while paying seven outside board members $3. 6 million in 2007? How can you justify paying Richard Syron, disgraced when the government removed him from his $19.8 million-a-year job as head of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac), $524,484 for attending 13 Genzyme board meetings? Did union-busting King & Spalding law firm insider Connie Mack deserve $624,669 or MIT professor Dr. Charles Cooney $481,183 for attending a few Genzyme board meetings?

4. How do you respond to accusations, like those of Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine that Genzyme's drug Cerezyme is "perhaps the most extreme example . . . of price gouging" in the industry?

Thank you for your prompt attention.

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Dear Mr. Termeer, Since you are on Gov. Patrick's Council of Economic Advisors and taxpayers are being asked to provide at least $1 billion through the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to companies such as Genzyme, please answer the following questions: 1. What has been your role and that of other Genzyme executives, representatives and lobbyists in establishing, running and promoting the MLSC as the conduit for taxpayer-financed corporate welfare to highly profitable biotech companies? 2. In light of Genzyme's profits and your compensation packages totaling $58 million in 2006 and 2007, do you think it is fair that Genzyme should receive handouts from local, state and federal governments, particularly when badly needed social services and public sector jobs are being slashed? 3. How do you explain Genzyme soliciting and accepting taxpayer-funded subsidies while paying seven outside board members $3.7 million in 2007? How can you justify paying Richard Syron, disgraced when the government removed him from his $19.8 million-a-year job as head of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac), $524,484 for attending 13 Genzyme board meetings? Did union-busting King & Spalding law firm insider Connie Mack deserve $624,669 or MIT professor Dr. Charles Cooney $481,183 for attending a few Genzyme board meetings? 4. How do you respond to accusations, like those of Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine that Genzyme's drug Cerezyme is "perhaps the most extreme example...of price gouging" in the industry? Thank you for your prompt attention.