April 28, 2003
Here's a story ripped from today's headlines. A mysterious flu-like disease with no known cure which originated in southern China in November hits Hong Kong in March. It kills dozens, and sickens and infects thousands there. It spreads, leaving that health-care system on the brink of collapse, and moves like wildfire throughout the world and to America thanks to travelers.
While doctors in China recommend an ancient brew of dead silkworms and cicada-skin, American doctors and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention go through thousands of existing drugs in a fruitless search for a treatment or a cure. Then, when all hope is lost, one biotech company, AVI BioPharma, says it should be able to develop a drug that would attack the SARS virus within a week of receiving its genetic code, which researchers in Canada just discovered this weekend. The company uses a technique that disables viral genes and has already made experimental drugs for coronaviruses similar to the SARS virus that causes illnesses in cats and lab mice.
But then, the drug doesn't get made. A group of individuals dedicated to weakening the ability of private companies to produce bioterror countermeasures and other products essential to public health make it virtually impossible for the company to invest in and develop the drug. They threaten to challenge the price and patent of the drug. And they block any effort to protect the company from any lawsuits that arise from the product's testing or use. These groups fancy themselves as opponents of high drug prices. But, what they are in practice are the new bioterrorists - organizations that through persistent tactics and organized resistance weaken our ability as a nation to respond to weapons of mass destruction and other public-health threats.
Sounds like fiction? First, meet the Prescription Access Litigation Project (PAL), which is suing to shorten the patent life of Cipro - the leading brand drug used to treat anthrax - earlier than its legal term to allow generic versions on the market. Decrying the inadequacy of the arrangement that the federal government just negotiated with Bayer, the project has organized consumer groups in eleven states - representing over a million consumers - to sign on to the litigation.
What PAL is really doing is fronting for trial attorneys awash in tobacco cash, and who are now seeking to bankrupt biotech and drug companies by suing for early termination of valid patents on a retainer basis. It acts as a holding company for plaintiffs' lawyers who have banded together and created war chests to help fund what they think will be very expensive litigation.
The law firms handling PAL's patent-killing lawsuits include those that have made millions suing tobacco firms. These firms and other companies work from a playbook that challenges the validity of every new patent, seeking to end its legal life as early as possible. Again, this has nothing to do with unlawful behavior. It is simply a matter of a law firm's trying to get state courts to rule that the patents are invalid and then get a percentage of the monopoly profit that the generic firms will get during the 180 days they will be able to sell their drug without any competition after the court ruling.
Trial attorneys have made it nearly impossible to introduce innovative drugs and vaccines to defend the homeland. Indeed, the threat of a class-action lawsuit is more certain than that of a bioterrorist attack, which is why no biotech or pharmaceutical company in its right mind will invest in countermeasures or small-market drugs without liability protection.
Consider what Scott Gottlieb of the FDA science adviser's office has to say about the growing risks of litigation, even as new drugs have become safer than everyday aspirin: "The bowel drug Lotronex caused fewer than fifty serious events in 300,000 prescriptions before it was withdrawn, and became the subject of costly litigation. Even drugs like aspirin, which cause hundreds of deaths each year, could not meet the safety standards patients expect today. All this has become a bonanza for lawyers, however, as our society gets more accustomed to taking medications for a wider range of problems. Bayer is facing more than 8,000 lawsuits after Bayer's widely used cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol was withdrawn from the market after being linked to about 100 deaths."
People who did not suffer any side-effects at all, however, are filing at least 6,000 of those lawsuits. How much will these lawsuits eventually cost? Bayer has reportedly paid about $125 million to settle the first 500 cases. As with tobacco litigation, a large slice of those payments goes to plaintiff attorneys.
Which explains why they are also fighting so hard to block any effort to include any liability protection for companies like AVI Biopharma. The drugs and vaccines they produce are more indispensable and safe then ever. They are also fatter targets, too. So, it is no surprise that the haters of capitalism and the bottom-feeders of the parasite economy have found common cause in bankrupting private-sector companies in pursuit of medical progress.
Robert Goldberg is director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress.
Copyright © 2003 News World Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times. Visit our web site at http://www.washingtontimes.com
Cashing in on SARS
Animal rights groups were quick off the mark to cash in on SARS.
Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) waved signs and wore pink masks emblazoned with a pig with the slogan, "Say No to Pig Farm Germs." Go Vegetarian," in front of a Scarborough, Ontario hospital placed under a mandated SARS quarantine.
"The battle against SARS and other diseases begins with your fork," says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. "Rejecting meat means rejecting filthy animal farming practices that cause outbreaks of influenza and avoiding the heart attacks, cancer and strokes that plague meat-eaters."
Talking the talk
A politically correct era forces creativity in lexicon. Now the Republican Party of the U.S. has responded to the call for softer, greener language.
Over the last six months, the Party has subtly repackaged its message on the environment, an issue that one wag called "the single biggest vulnerability for the Republicans and especially for George Bush."
As a memorandum advised them to, the Republicans have softened their language to appeal to suburban voters, speaking out for protecting national parks and forests, advocating investment in environment technologies, and shifting emphasis to the future rather than the present.
Strategist Frank Luntz has convinced Republican politicians and their aides to listen up to "the environmental communications battle."
In a memorandum, Luntz urges that the term "climate change" be used instead of "global warming," because "while global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge."
Also, he wrote, "conservationist" conveys a "moderate, reasoned, common sense position," while "environmentalist" has the "connotation of extremism."
"Senator John B. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, was elected to his first term in November after running advertisements promoting his efforts for clean water and forest preservation," according to the New York Times. "It is only a slight exaggeration to say that historically, Republicans went out and talked about the budget or taxes and the economy and waited to get beat up on the environment and education, hoping that they could hold their own," Sununu said. "Why wait? Why not step forward and talk about work that you have done to improve the waterways or national parks?"
Now that Republicans are talking the talk, national environmental groups say that the shift has blunted the edge of Republican attacks. "They are not playing defense anymore," said Kim Haddow, a consultant for the Sierra Club, who has helped counter some Republican advertisements. "It’s like a tennis game. The ball is back in our court, and we need to spend time and energy educating voters."
Banning the trees
Environmental activists may be forced to switch slogans now that the prestigious journal Nature says that coniferous forests around the world may be emitting more smog-causing nitrogen oxides than traffic and industry combined.
The report flies in the face of the accepted view that forests reduce pollution by absorbing it--a theory Canada relied on in demanding credit for forests as pollution "sinks" under the Kyoto climate change accord.
But environmentalists aren’t about to blacklist Scotch pines, reports Ottawa News. They note forests emissions are part of a natural balance that has existed since pre-industrial times.
Scotch pine needles are not only fragrant, they release oxides directly into the atmosphere when exposed to ultraviolet light, says a study led by Perri Hari of the University of Helsinki.
Nitrogen oxides are smog precursors: They combine with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone, a major component of smog.
"Although this contribution is insignificant on a local scale, our findings suggest that global NOX emissions from boreal coniferous forests may be comparable to those produced by worldwide industrial and traffic sources," says the report.
Kevin Percy, of the Canadian Forest Service in Fredericton, N.B., said he has problems with the suggestion that the emissions from coniferous trees could exceed those from traffic and industry.
"From my perspective, that would be pure conjecture at this point."
Meanwhile, perhaps former U.S. President Ronald Reagan was right when he claimed it could be time to ban trees.
Perhaps North American cities, including Toronto, were prudent not to respond to the clarion call of environmental activists to return to the days of the horse and carriage.
Where have all the peaceniks gone?
Saddam Hussein and his regime are not the only ones in hiding. The same could be said for certain elements of the modern day organizers of peace marches.
Why?
American writer James K. Glassman is there to remind the Eco-contingent of the anti-war movement of their record to date: "Before the war, they told us that 500,000 Iraqis would be killed in Dresden-like bombing, that we would precipitate an Eco-catastrophe by pushing Saddam to set fire to his own oil wells, that millions of people would flee the country, that thousands of our own troops would be killed, that the Arab "street" would rise up, that terrorist attacks would resume ferociously on our homeland, that we would become bogged down in urban warfare, and on and on.
"In fact, none of that has happened," said Glassman "It has been a war unmatched in history, with relatively few civilian and allied casualties, and the prime objectives--control of the capital and the destruction of Saddam’s regime--achieved in only a few weeks.
"Conscientious opponents of the war should say they were wrong, wrong, wrong--on all counts. Certainly, if there had been failures, they would have condemned Bush administration officials and supporters of the war."