Letter: Legislation would cripple research

Thursday, July 29, 1999 | 10:01 a.m.

Legislation recently sponsored by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., should have carried a warning label that this bill could be hazardous to people suffering from uncured diseases such as kidney cancer.

About 30,400 Americans have kidney cancer, and 200 cases were diagnosed in Nevada last year. This legislation would hurt those patients by hurting research on a cure.

HR664 would bring more than 40 percent of the pharmaceutical market under price controls. Price controls and innovation do not mix.

Price controls will discourage private-sector pharmaceutical research and deprive thousands of kidney cancer patients of the hope for a cure. If this proposal becomes law, the drug companies' revenues will slip and so will their ability to invest in research and development.

Rep. Berkley, there's a better way to help needy seniors without hurting the incentives for research on cures. Let us modernize Medicare so that seniors who now lack prescription drug coverage can have it. But let us do it in a way that doesn't cripple research.

CARL DIXON

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