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Letter: Drug profits come with consequences

Saturday, Dec. 17, 2005 | 7:27 a.m.

Excellent idea by Edward Loughlin in his Dec. 14 letter regarding prescription drugs, "Many countries offer cheaper drugs." The drug makers have them. We need them. So let's just seize them -- or do the next best thing, which is to use the power of government to force their sale at an arbitrarily lower price. Works for Canada, France and all the other countries Mr. Loughlin cites.

The only problem is that price controls have all but destroyed the pharmaceutical industries in those countries. The only major market where drug makers can invest the gargantuan sums necessary to invent new cures and treatments, with the expectation that they may someday recoup those investments, is the United States. Our consumers now subsidize drug research and development for the rest of the world.

We're all free to disagree, as Mr. Loughlin apparently does, with the way drug makers run their businesses or to resent our dependence on their products. But let's not pretend that we can confiscate their profits without consequence.

Jeff Nation

Las Vegas

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