ONE’S MEDICINE
Re: Lawrence Henry’s Drugs
and Me — and You:
Loved this article. Thank you.
— Sherri Goodman
Arizona
I agree with your article. I, too, have a kidney transplant — 30
years. I was 27 years old and I agree without our drug companies I
would not be here. In fact, I argued this fact to an economist
(Ph.D.) last week who felt (after seeing Peter Jennings) that all
the research should be nationalized! Luckily I had just taken my
blood pressure pills prior to this comment!
Last April my kidney started to fail; I was switched to Cellcept
and am on a low protein diet (50-60 grams a day, usually around
50). So far things are a lot better for me.
Enjoyed your article,
— Margaret Young
Cincinnati, OH
Perhaps Robert Torricelli does want Lawrence Henry dead. It
wouldn’t surprise me — Torricelli seems like that kind of guy, you
know? However, Douglas Forrester only wants Lawrence alive until
the moment he can no longer afford his drugs.
While it’s true that drugs companies do manufacture miraculous
medicines to keep patients like Lawrence Henry alive, they also do
things like manufacture slightly altered versions of drugs to
circumvent patent laws. This keeps the miraculous drugs expensive
far longer than should be the case (or would be the case in the
free market). In addition, they inflate prices to reclaim billions
of dollars in marketing costs (in many cases to push new drugs that
don’t work as well as older, cheaper ones), then cry “R&D”
whenever anyone questions it. And this is before their deals with
insurance companies and the consumer’s ignorance about drug prices
screw things up further.
Drug companies claim that if they’re not allowed to reap
tremendous, unchecked profit margins, then maybe the next time
Lawrence Henry needs a kidney they might not make that new drug he
needs. This is a “we’ll-take-our-ball-and-go-home” argument that
demands gratitude for being held over a barrel. If a man saves your
life and takes everything you own in the process, you should be
grateful. But if he only needed half your stuff to cover his
R&D, pay the stockholders a nice dividend, and send his kid to
a private college … and he still took everything … well, then
you’d be [angry]. And you’d be right.
— Matthew Meltzer
Los Angeles, CA
Lawrence Henry replies: Well, allowing
that Mr. Meltzer’s “argument” is scarcely coherent, what does
“Robert Torricelli,” as synecdoche for the Democratic Party,
propose to do instead? All the supposed horrors Mr. Meltzer cites
in drug pricing can be traced to regulation and price controls. Our
own medical universe is full of them. More important, many foreign
countries compel our drug companies essentially to sell at a
loss.
UNDER WESTERN EYES:
Re: George Neumayr’s Churchill
and India:
My friend George Neumayr seems to accept the media’s doomsday
assumption that India and Pakistan will nuke it out. He also
accepts the assumption that India has been de-westernized, claiming
that “No one who knows India today” can dispute Churchill’s wisdom,
etc. I never dispute Churchill’s wisdom, but I also know that
wisdom expressed in the 1930s, however much we romanticize it, does
not necessarily apply to today. India’s done so much westernizing
lately that many conservative foreign policy mavens consider
playing the India card against China. As for the doomsday scenario,
it seems already to be de-escalating; pray that it continues.
George seldom believes the media, but he may have swallowed this
time.
— K. E. Grubbs Jr.
NOT MY DEPARTMENT
Having read Jed Babbin’s column “Homeland
Security Circus,” I think it might be interesting to think back
to Mrs. Thatcher in the days of her glory when it was suggested to
her to create a new department.
It was reported that she “chewed on” the proposer by saying “I
told you to deal with the problem, not to make it worse. Once we
have an entire government department whose size, pay, and
perquisites depend upon the existence of the problem, we’ll never
get rid of it.”
If the bigger government personages of a Tom Daschle and Dick
Gephardt are “hell bent for leather” in forming G.W.’s department,
something has got to be wrong.
— Ken Wyman
Huntsville, AL
Jed Babbin replies: It’s against my
religion to disagree with Lady Thatcher, but I think the thought
doesn’t fit our situation. We’re in a new situation, and our
government in its current form is clearly incapable of dealing with
this threat. We need to keep our eye on this new agency to make
sure it doesn’t grow like kudzu (and its acronym is a bad omen.
DOHs sounds like something out of Homer Simpson).
But this is a new kind of war — one that comes to the front
door of every American home — and we need to have new tools to
deal with it. We need to bring border security into the new
environment. Sorry, but this is one agency even conservatives
should welcome.
MIXED UP MEDIA
Re: George Neumayr’s Scornful
Scribes:
Your commentary concerning the media’s treatment of the church’s
problem needed to be said. It’s a wonder they don’t end their
commentary with a “smiley face” stamp.
For this Roman Catholic, as distinguished from an American
Catholic, the liberalization of the Roman Catholic Church that
resulted from the debacle of “Vatican II” is not only bearing its
current poisonous fruit but is also emboldening a liberal attack on
the celibacy of the priesthood. The church’s position
vis-à-vis homosexuality will grow exponentially.
In summary, those concerned over the violation of our children
must not let the aforementioned revisionists “muddy the waters”
with their pernicious peeves.
— Kenneth E. Wyman
Huntsville, AL
Having just read Andrew Sullivan’s article in Time, “Who
Says the Church Can’t Change,” which you cited, I find it difficult
to believe that he is a Ph.D from an Ivy League School or an
educated Catholic. He is mixing too many issues together:
theological, administrative, and tradition. This cannot be done. He
also seems to dismiss the biblical basis on which the sexual ethics
and morality of the Church, through her magisterium, are based.
He needs a refresher course in theology.
— Bill Guentner
HORSING AROUND
Re: Editorial note On
This Good Turf:
War Emblem’s jockey was lucky not to have been thrown. But at
the end of the backstretch this very nice horse was on the rail and
in good position — and had nothing left! The subject is an
excellent segue to the greatest Belmont ever. In June of 1973,
Secretariat’s groom, Eddie Sweat, led the big horse out of his
Belmont shed for an early walk. Oh, about, thirty feet away a water
bucket was inadvertently knocked over by a pony girl. Secretariat,
at once, was up on his hind legs, pawing at the sky and walking in
circles. He was raring to go off, the rest is histoire!
Never was a horse so fit, he burst out of the gate at Belmont and
sprinted the one and one-half mile in 2:24 flat. One can still hear
the announcer as Secretariat roared down the backstretch, “And
secretariat is moving like a tremendous machine.” He came home all
alone, hand ridden, with any competition more than a sixteenth of a
mile away. The best description of “Big Red” is by his biographer,
William Nack. In speaking of the horse in human terms, he
described, think of the greatest athlete in the world, oh, about
six foot three, intelligent, kind and the best looking guy to ever
come down the turnpike.
— Edward Del Colle
