HMS/HSDM Class Day: Science Applied to Problems of the Poor HSPH Class Day: Speakers Address People's Health and Social Disparities Alumni Day Symposium: HMS Alums Take on the Health Care Crisis Class Symposium Class of '79 Details Illness in the Body Politic Faculty Symposium: At the NRB, Faculty View Convergence of Biology and Medicine Class Day: HMS/HSDM Speakers Describe Their Personal Journeys International Health: Education and Research Center Launched in Dubai Medical Education: New Residency Created in Global Health Prizes and Awards: Honors Given to Students and Faculty for 2004 Letter to the Editor   Small Molecule Blocks Herpes Replication Test Ratio Predicts Breast Cancer Patients Who Respond to Tamoxifen   Proceedings of the HMS Faculty Council   Student-Faculty Collaboration Yields Pharmacology Text   Front Page

Letter to the Editor May 4, 2004 Dear Editor: In the April 16 Focus, fourth-year student Renee Hsia offered a circumspect argument about drug pricing to the effect that regulation would not enhance access or availability, would discourage research and development, and in several ways, would be politically unacceptable ("When It Comes to Drugs, Price Is Not the Real Problem"). To this layperson, the line is perhaps too kind. To be sure, the pharmaceutical industry operates in our fundamentalist climate, where three fourths of us are said to not accept evolution, the Social Security retirement age is sacrosanct, a military draft is unthinkable, large cars are our right, culture and medicine are just commodities, and so on. In that context, drug companies, like others, can take refuge in the usual claim that the stockholders demand it and, for example, raise a price by a factor of five without the excuse of scarcity. The large pharmaceutical houses are big players in the economy. Their research and development is sometimes to very good effect, but much of it focuses on blockbuster drugs and the refining of known medications. It neglects ones with lower potential profits, spends large amounts on advertising, and makes efforts toward megamergers to both enhance market fraction and downsize. Bernard Davis, a microbiologist and former department chair at HMS, would say to students that when he was in their place, drug house X made ether, while now the newer one, Y, makes money. Then, the point was meant to shock because unregulated capitalism would have been thought extreme except among Ayn Rand groupies. No longer so. Yet received wisdom changes, and an idea like "Government is the problem" is not set in stone and some time on will be viewed again as a quaint ism. And then we surely will have--it is hard to find a physician at HMS who does not think so--some type of single-payer system in medicine in which drug prices will be regulated, but the pharmaceutical and insurance companies will still do both good and well. Dan Fraenkel Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, HMS