The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Down on the Pharma

4.11.07 @ 12:01AM

BITTER MEDICINE
Re: Doug Bandow's Big Pharma's Just Deserts:

Doug Bandow's article misses an important point. Namely, Pharma has no respect for Americans or America. If they valued American capitalism they would not practically give their patented drugs to the socialists in Canada or Europe. If they really cared about America, their stockholders or even intellectual property, they would have uniform prices worldwide that would fund their drug research and development and provide a handsome return for their investors.

There is a price for almost everything. If one price point is the death of America's legacy Pharma companies, it may serve future generations better by depriving socialists of a free good and a cheap public right.

God Bless,
-- Ira Press

This article on another big government fiasco brings to mind an even more serious issue of government action or inaction that is causing untold pain and even death to our citizens. The unholy alliance between the trial lawyers (sure former Senator Edwards is and was just interested in helping people and just happened to get rich as an afterthought) and the FDA resulting in the decertification of certain almost miracle drugs and the failure or delay in certifying new needed drugs is causing unnecessary pain and death to thousands.

For example more and more infections especially staph infections are becoming more and more resistant to current broad spectrum antibiotics but the FDA is dragging its feet in approving many very promising new antibiotics. I speak from experience, when I had a knee replacement the first one was destroyed by a staph infection after two months. The doctors told me the only possible antibiotic to combat the staph was Vancomycin and there was a twenty percent chance it would not work and then the only option was to fuse the knee and be like Chester on Gunsmoke for the rest of my life.

Fortunately for me it worked but it is constantly on my mind that next time it may not. Every medicine has side effects and the risks must be explained to the patient and then he or she should be allowed to make the final decision with the advice of the doctor. The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that were withdrawn because of a small increase in heart attacks by users are a case in point. Many patients say that these drugs meant the difference between a normal active life and being a cripple but now they no longer have a choice.

The government and the trial lawyers are there to help them, sure. Rather than pursuing the phony religion of global warming this is something that crazy old Al Gore and his cohorts could really sink their teeth into and actually reduce the suffering of thousands even millions of people.
-- Jack Wheatley
Royal Oak, Michigan

THE FIRE NEXT TIME
Re: George H. Wittman's Iran's Revolutionary S.S.:

Mr. Wittman is preaching to the choir. Those of us who are regular readers of TAS already know these things and appreciate the real danger to the civilized world from these stone age thugs with no morality except murder is good and necessary for all infidels.

However, TAS readers are not now running the country. The party of cowards (at best) and traitors (at worst) are now in charge. It is absolutely necessary in order to be a liberal democrat to ignore all reality that doesn't fold into you viewpoint. During the Vietnam war American soldiers were thugs and drug addicts. The Communists were the joyful butterflies, happily flitting over fields of flowers, spreading peace and joy. You remember, John Kerry said something like that. So did Jane Fonda. They were able to ignore constant, recurring atrocities that were the policy of the Communists. One such that I saw just after it happened was designed to persuade a village chief to turn over his rice supple to the NVA. To show him the error of his ways in seeking first to feed his village, his pregnant daughter was roped to a pole by the NVA, with her arms over her head, her belly cut open and her infant ripped form her and burned while still attached to her by its umbilical cord. She died with the smell of her own flesh and that of her infant in her nostrils. Nice people who do things like that.

The Muslims openly tell us we will all be murdered. They tell us it is their religious duty to murder us all, each and every one. They tell us they will do it by cutting off our heads. They do cut off the heads of captives to punctuate their promises.

So what do the Democrats do? They go to Syria to make nice with a state sponsor of terrorism. Why? Because all this terror stuff is George Bush's fault because he won't be nice to the murderers. It matters not the truth of the situation, because democrats and Muslims have a hatred in common: George Bush and America. Democrats will make excuses and apologies for murderers internationally as they have done domestically since the time of Ramsey Clark.

I just had a liberal friend at my house who told me a congressman from Florida -- a Democrat -- told him Iran was chomping at the bit to establish a friendly relationship with America and as soon as we signaled our willingness to do so they would throw out the Mullahs and become a secular state once again.

I am very afraid.
-- Jay Molyneaux
Denver, North Carolina

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Business, Religion, Islam, Global Warming, Law, Founding Fathers, Iran, Russia, NATO, North Korea